


The Future's So Bright

by CyberspaceSoldier



Category: Paper Girls (Comics)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 14:39:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 23,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16578431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CyberspaceSoldier/pseuds/CyberspaceSoldier
Summary: For Mac, life goes back to normal when they make it home to 1988. But after having seen everything from the distant future to the prehistoric past, having a near brush with future death, and ultimately preventing the creation of what might be technology's greatest achievement, can anything go back to being 'normal?'





	1. I Gotta Feeling '89 is Gonna Be A Good Year

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this in my head for awhile, but only got around to typing it up now (plus, now that we're getting closer to the end of the series, it's easier for me to stick as close to what happened in the canon as possible in a fanfic). 
> 
> Basically it's just what life is like for Mac after they get home. The whole thing will probably be from her point-of-view, but KJ, Erin, and Tiffany will be major characters, as well. It takes place over about twelve months, from December 31st, 1988, to January 1st, 1990.
> 
> Obviously, I'm not going to ignore Mac/KJ--but they're only twelve, so I'd feel weird focusing on it to much.
> 
> This is my favorite comic coming out right now, and I can't wait for it to come back!
> 
> I chose the title because they reference this song in Issue #21.
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING: This comic features alcoholism and references to abusive parents

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31st, 1988.

 

11:30pm EST.

 

STONY STREAM, OHIO. 

 

Mac was sitting at the edge of the sidewalk at the shopping mall, about a mile-and-half from her house. It was closed now, and had been for two and a half hours, which Mac thought that was kind of stupid. 9pm on a Saturday and there was no where open for anyone to go.

 

Usually there were other groups of teenagers around when she came here after dark. They would be smoking cigarettes, or doing graffiti, and other things, things that Mac wasn't sure she exactly understood. But tonight it was empty, which wasn't surprising; it was New Year's Eve, and Mac thought with disgust about all the idiots who were probably partying, drinking, maybe even lighting fireworks.

 

 _They're gonna freaking blow something up_ , she thought, about no one in particular.

A few years before, Mac had discovered that if you came to the mall after dark on New Years Eve, you could have a perfect view of some fireworks show someone put off. She wasn't sure who exactly was behind it--probably one of the rich families from a neighborhood that wasn't hers. Usually the mall was open later than it was tonight, and again, there would be stupid kids running around and bothering everyone. But the night of December 31st it was always empty, and no one ever came and told her she wasn't supposed to be there, which she probably wasn't. And they never asked where her parents were.

 

So every year since, Mac came to sit and watch the stars and wait for the fireworks. 1989. Almost the 90s. In a way, she didn't care. After all, she knew the year 2000 looked pretty much the same as it did now. 2016 looked different, maybe, but not that different. Neither of them were any better. If someone were to ask her, she'd say that she didn't give a shit about the future. Heck, when she asked herself, she said she didn't care. This was a lie.

 

Because sometimes she wondered what would happen when the early 90s actually did come.

 

When the four of them--Mac, along with KJ, Tiff, and Erin--had somehow ended up in the year 2055, Erin had been the one to come with a way where maybe they could stop it all. Find that lady they met in prehistoric times who invented time travel in the first place, and stop her. So that's what they'd done. And now it was time travel never happened. Like...none of that ever happened.

 

That meant, logically, that everything that happened because of time travel should also have never happened. Quanta--or whatever her name was, the time travel woman--had confirmed this for them.  Everything else remained unchanged, but time travel, and everything that was directly because of time travel, wouldn’t happen. Which meant Mac should be alright. But sometimes Heck's words still came into head. That your fate's your fate, and you can't change it. If that was true, than Mac wouldn't get to see the year 2000 again, or 2016,  or even 1995.

And Tiffany didn't have it so much better.

 

Thinking of either of those possibilities gave Mac a sick feeling in her stomach, and she scraped her fingernails against the sidewalk. It hurt, sort of, but she liked it better than thinking about What She Was Thinking About.

 

If everything had really been erased, why did she remember it? Quanta had explained why to them, several times, but it made Mac's head hurt and she still didn't understand it. Erin and Tiffany and KJ seemed too, but they probably just pretended to. Mac had said at the time that she didn't care how it worked, as long as it meant she wouldn't die. That was true, but now she was thinking that if she knew exactly why she and Tiff wouldn't die, than maybe she'd be more sure.

It must have been almost midnight by now. Mac tried to count the stars, but she couldn't focus as long as she usually could. She took her pack of cigarettes out of her pocket, and studied one for a minute. She'd grabbed the pack from her stepmother's stuff early that morning, when she'd been about to deliver papers with Erin and KJ. Just the three of them, Mac thought, and she didn't like that thought. Just her, Erin, and KJ. They were the only girls still delivering papers. Tiffany has turned thirteen two weeks ago, and, like Tiff’s adult self had predicted in the year 2000, Tiffany's parents had made her give up her paper route at the end of November.

 

That hadn’t anything to do with time travel in the first place, so really it didn't mean anything. After all, Quanta had said that everything else would be unchanged. So Erin would still live in Stony Stream as an adult, work for The Preserver as a journalist or whatever, Tiffany would still drop out of business school and marry that werido Chris. Everything else would be the way that it was before.

 

Mac lit the cigarette with the lighter she'd paid for with her paper money. What about KJ? They’d never learned what happened to her.

 

They’d never run into her in 2000 or in 2016. What if her family moved away? Or if....no. No. Mac wouldn’t think about that. It was probably just a coincidence. After all, lots of kids don’t stay in the town where they lived in as kids once they get older. KJ was going to college in six years, and knowing her it would probably be at one of those fancy schools people were always talking about--like Harvard or something.

Mac had stopped paying attention to what she was doing, and somehow she let the cigarette fall out of mouth. Rookie mistake. Irritably, she went to light a new one, and in her head heard KJ telling her not to, as usually happened when Mac went to smoke one.

 

Mac wondered if the fireworks people had kids, and if they went to Buttonwood Academy, which was KJ’s school. Probably not, more likely they went to Tiffany’s or to Erin’s. They might not even exist.

 

The fireworks started. They were probably really loud when you got close to them, Mac thought, but far away they hardly made any noise at all. Just these weird popping sounds. They were colorful and sort of bright, and they probably polluted the air horribly. Mac couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to be under them while they were going off, but she sort of liked seeing them from far away. They lasted a couple minutes, as they always did, and then as quickly as they started they went away.

 

1989, officially. Mac stood up, her legs slightly wobbly from having sat still for so long. She crossed the empty parking lot, shivering from the January cold. She’d parked her bike in one of the spaces for cars, because there was no one else who might be parking there. Her bike looked sort of ridiculous, alone in a parking lot, in a space that was several times to big for it.

She grabbed the handlebars and swung her leg over the seat, adjusted her position, and started to make her way home. She made that trip pretty often, both in the day and at night, so she knew where to go and when without having to think about it to much.

Mac was pretty fast on her bike. Not as fast as KJ, but faster than any of the other boys or girls she’d seen delivering papers. But by now her bike was old and didn’t go as fast as it used to, and she had to go slower than usual because there was a little bit of ice on the street. Not that much, but it had snowed a few weeks before and it was leftover from that.

 

The ride home usually took about twenty minutes, but it took longer than usual tonight. She didn’t feel like putting her bike in the garage, so instead she just threw it out into the lawn. She glanced up the house and thought about how it had looked in 2016. She wondered if it would still like that, and hoped that wouldn’t.

 

The porch steps creaked under her feet, and she wondered bitterly if they’d cave in before her parents thought to replace them.

She took her key to the house out of her jacket pocket and shoved it into the look on the door. She hoped her parents would be asleep by now; disturbing them at night, but before they’d gone to bed, usually ended badly.

 

She looked around the house. The lights were off, and nobody seemed to be awake. Empty beer bottles were scattered across the floor, some of which had broken, somehow. Mac avoided them best she could, and kept her combat boots on as she made her way to her bedroom. She locked the door behind her, preferring the privacy, and kicked off her boots. She wondered if her brother was home yet, from wherever it was he went during the day.

 

Mac changed into the t-shirt she wore at night as quickly as she could. She grabbed the mixtape she made the year before, and put on her headphones. All it had on it was a bunch of New Years’ songs, most of which Mac didn’t like that much, but they were all she could find for that holiday. She sat on the floor and looked out the window; she could see the light and the tall buildings in the city  They’d look different by 2171. She thought about the rooftop above the old arcade, and then pushed it out of her mind.

When her tape ended Mac decided to go to bed. She’d regret staying up this late, probably, when she had to get up before 5am tomorrow morning to deliver papers. That was alright. She hadn’t bothered to turn the light on in her room when she came in, so it was already dark. She got into bed and took one last look around the room.

 

Clothes and comics and stuff for school that she’d forgotten about were all over the floor. Her walkman and tapes were in one corner, and in the other were a few books her brother had made her read that she hadn’t liked that much. She’d put her library card on top of them, so she wouldn’t forget where it was if she ever needed it.

 

Her walls were covered in band posters, and she had 1988 calendar hung up on her closet. She’d have to get a different one now, she thought.

 

She’d been off school for Christmas break for the past two weeks, but it came back on Monday. She had homework that she’d forgotten about that she could do tomorrow. She had mixed feelings about going back to school. The kids there were usually dickweeds, or idiots, or both. The teachers weren’t really any better But it was an easy way to kill some time during the day and not be at home, so for that it wasn’t so bad.

 

1989\. It was one year closer to the future now, although what Mac meant by the future, she didn’t really know. The 21st century? 2055, when time travel was almost created? The 71st century, where the rebellion that never happened would’ve done the things they now wouldn’t do? Or her own future, whatever it was. It was all closer now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's all for now! I really hope you guys enjoy it.
> 
> I know this first chapter is more exposition than actual story, but I promise it'll pick up soon. This is basically just a prologue to try to show where all the characters are right now.
> 
> This is my first fanfic on here (although I've done others in some other places), but I'm doing the best I can. 
> 
> I'm going to try to come up with good titles for every chapter, but we'll see how that goes.
> 
> Also, I happened to meet a waitress named Mackenzie yesterday. But it was a completely different Mackenzie in every respect.


	2. You can run, you can hide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter two! I hope you guys like it.
> 
> I don't know exactly when chapter three will be out, but definitely by next week.
> 
> There's more story this time than in chapter one. And there's KJ, so that's something.

The rest of January passed slowly.

 

It didn't get above thirty or forty degrees most days, and it snowed a lot. Not snow that you could have snowball fights with, either. Just the watery kind that somehow always managed to get in your shoes and make your socks wet. It got worse the longer it stayed, because skid marks from people's tires and shoes covered it with dirt. Getting up a 5am and trying to pedal through several inches of slush in freezing cold weather got less appealing each day.

 

"I heard some of the other deliverers’ folks have started driving them some mornings so they don’t have to bike.” KJ said, one particularly cold morning when the wind was so bad it was almost impossible to hear. They’d just finished their routes, and for the last few houses had discovered it was actually easier to just go by foot and wheel their bikes next to them.

 

Mac scoffed. “They can’t handle their routes, they shouldn’t have them.” 

 

  
“Okay. I’m just saying.” KJ replied. Mac wasn’t looking in KJ’s direction, but she guessed the taller girl was rolling her eyes. Kj changed the subject. “Hey! Did I tell you about my bat mitzvah?”

“What? No.” Actually, KJ had mentioned something like that a few times before. But not recently, and nothing about it happening soon.

 

“Yeah. The party’s only like six weeks away by now.”

 

Mac tried to remember what KJ had mentioned about it. “Your birthday’s, what, February something?”

 

“February 3rd, Mac.” KJ’s tone implied that Mac should have known that. “The party’s March 5th.”

 

Mac wasn’t sure how she was supposed to respond, so instead she said, 

“Tiff was better than the guy who has her route now.”

 

“If you say so.” KJ sighed, and later it would occur to Mac that she might have just accidentally rejected an invitation.

They didn’t talk much the rest of the way, until they made it back to KJ’s house. It had a big yard and a pool. The pool was closed now, but KJ said she didn’t go in even when it was open. She never said why, and it seemed to Mac like she tried to change the subject whenever someone mentioned it. “I’m going to be late for school,” KJ said, she went to hug Mac goodbye.

 

Mac stiffened. She tried to ignore it, and she never exactly let it enter her mind, but Mac felt different when KJ touched her than when Tiff or Erin did. She fought the urge to step back, and KJ let Mac go after a moment. She handed Mac a walkie-talkie. “Could you and Erin bring these back to Tiffany?” she said, “I don’t have time. The bus is coming in a couple minutes, and my parents can’t drive me today.”

 

“Yeah, okay.” Mac couldn’t quite meet KJ’s eyes. KJ’s brown eyes and long curly hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, I guess.”

 

“Nope. I’ve actually got hockey practice,” KJ said, with a friendly smile. “But my parents are letting me go to the arcade after school tomorrow. You could come, if you want.”

“Kinda far to bike, Kaje.” Mac said. It was about four miles away, which was manageable in the spring or summer, but not when it windy and snowing. The truth was that she could probably get her brother to drive her, but for some reason she didn’t say that. Why? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go--she did. She liked video games, and they were one of those things she was actually pretty good at, even compared to the private school kids. And KJ was her best friend. But for some reason she sort of felt like she shouldn’t go, even if she wanted too, and once she’d answered it was to late to change her mind.

 

“My parents can drive both of us. There’s room in their car and it’s only a few minutes.”

 

Mac couldn’t think of another excuse, and before she could come up with one she agreed. KJ told Mac to be at KJ’s house at 5 tomorrow, and they could go. Mac agreed and wheeled her bike down the street. Her jacket--which had been her brother’s when he was her age--was warm enough, but usually at this time of year it was cold no matter what she did. That day, though, she hardly felt the cold. Instead she felt strange and nervous and almost sick, and like she was doing something she shouldn’t, something her parents would reject. She felt this way the whole bus ride to school, while she stared sharply out the window and tried to ignore the 8th grades boys in front of her, talking about the girls they were ‘dating’.

***

At some point in Mac’s life she’d realized it just wasn’t worth it to get good grades in school. Everyone always knew who was getting good grades and who wasn’t, and if you did, you were a dork. Mac couldn’t be a dork. It’s not like the other kids left her alone as it was; lots of them, mainly girls, whispered about her and mocked her and left things in her locker. They weren’t that much worse to her than they were to most of the other kids who weren’t considered ‘in’, but she’d been in more than a few fights the past few years. Still, in a way, she was considered cool. A threat, but a cool threat. If she became a dork, that would go away, and that was just about the last thing she had when it came to her school reputation.

 

So for the most part she’d stopped paying attention, let her grades fail. The teachers didn’t like her anyway. They got stiff when they asked about her parents, and they complained about what teaching her brother had been like. Mac couldn’t imagine what they could complain about when it came to her brother. In any case, she’d let her grades drop, and her mind wander, and most days just doodled in her notebook, lost in thought, while her teachers talked.

 

Usually at lunch and recess she’d just try to block out the kids trying to bully her. She didn’t really care what they said, but for some reason she ended up arguing with them a lot anyway. Today, one of the girls, Candace, was talking to another one named Susie. “You know Ronnie? Her dad’s, like, the chief of police in Stony Stream?” she said, “Well, guess what? I heard he had to send a patrol down to Mackenzie’s house on Wednesday, and he took her father away in handcuffs!” Giggling from both girls started and they looked in Mac’s direction.

Mac stood up so sharply, the table almost shook. Usually she would have challenged them, but today she just took off towards the bathroom, head reeling. As she left, she could hear Candace go on. By the time she actually got out of the cafeteria, the story had somehow merged into something involving FBI helicopters or some bullshit. That part, of course, was completely made up, by Candace or Ronnie or someone else. But the worst thing was that the beginning of the story was actually true. Mac’s father had overdone it a few nights ago, and it had ended with Mac’s stepmother--Alice--actually calling the police. Alice had bailed him out a few hours later.

 

Mac’s face still stung. She’d been in the wrong place at the wrong tome that Wednesday. In the bathroom, she saw the mark clearly on her face. KJ had asked about it, and Mac had made up some story about falling off her bike. She didn’t think Kaje had believed it.

 

She found herself missing KJ, and she didn’t know why. She’d seen her that same day and would see her tomorrow. Mac pushed it away and waited for lunch period to end.

 

***

Mac’s brother took her to a Culver’s that night for dinner. She’d gotten home from school right as he was walking out of the house. “Come on, Mackenzie. You don’t want to be in there. C’mon.”

Her brother was older, he was nineteen. The past few years Mac hadn’t seen to much of him; he was always out with friends or something, not like when he was younger. But if he was saying they shouldn’t be in the house, he was probably right. She climbed into the passenger seat of her father’s old car while her brother got in the driver’s seat.

 

Mac accidentally kicked a beer bottle on the floor of the car. She took out her cigarettes and lighter, needing one all of a sudden. Her brother turned on the car radio and blasted it. Mac leaned back in her seat. She didn’t usually like loud noise; it reminded her of the nights when her father yelled and threw things while she tried to sleep. Sometimes she needed it, though. Sometimes she’d put on her headphones and play her loudest mixtape and pretend that everything around her was different.

 

Later, Mac and her brother were eating their chicken fingers in the car, and drinking soda pop. “How’s school going?” he asked, in sarcastic sort of tone.

 

Mac’s grades hadn’t been the best to begin with, and they’d only gotten worse since she’d stopped trying. “I don’t give a shit.” she said.

 

“Good for you.” he said, laughing. “Got any great plans for the week? Some of the guys and their girls and I are going to see a movie tomorrow. You’re  not old enough, believe me.”

 

Mac hesitated, wondering if she could tell him. Well, he was her brother, wasn’t he? Sure she could tell him. “A kid I deliver papers with is taking me to the arcade tomorrow.” She tried to keep her tone neutral, like his always was. She thought she sort of talked like him sometimes.

 

“Really!” This seemed to amuse him, for some reason. “What’s his name?”

 

“Her name’s KJ.”

 

 

“Hey, you told me about her.” he said, “She’s the kike, isn’t she?”

 

Mac flinched at the word. She tried to remember how she’d described KJ to him, a long time ago, when they’d first met. She couldn’t have used that word, right? She couldn’t of.

 

“What? That make you uncomfortable or something?” he asked.

 

“Of course not.” Mac said, forcing out the words even though they caught on her tongue.

 

“Good.” he said, “I didn’t think so.”

 

***

Mac and KJ went to the arcade the next day, as planned. KJ’s car was shiny and new and smelled like cleaning supplies. Her dad had found out he had something to do, and so it was her mom that drove her and Mac the next day. Mac wondered why KJ sat in the back, with her, instead of riding in the empty seat in front.

 

 

KJ’s mother dropped them off. KJ had a bag of quarters for the machines.

 

Mac didn’t come to the arcade very often, but she was pretty good at it. Better than KJ, which surprised her. KJ told Mac they should come more often.

 

They finished early, and KJ’s mom was at some new coffee shop called “Starbucks” and it would be a little while before she could pick them up. There was a movie theater next to the arcade, so they went to go look at the advertisements for the upcoming movies.

 

A new Batman movie, a new Indianna  Jones movie, and another movie which Mac found herself mentioning before she could stop. “Now, this the movie for us.” she said. 

 

The poster read Back To The Future II

 

“Hopefully not,” KJ said, studying it. They both stated at it, without speaking, until KJ said, “I never actually saw the first one. I don’t really get sci-fi movies.”

 

“I saw it. You didn’t miss much.” Why had Mac pointed it out? Why would she do that?

 

“The new kid will probably still go.” KJ said, referring to Erin. Than, “Mac, are you okay?”

 

“The hell do you mean?” Mac said, having to look up to make eye contact with the taller girl.

“Nothing. It just seems like you’ve been avoiding us.” KJ said, her voice gentler than it usually was. “Ever since we got back. You almost never talk to us except when we’re delivering papers, and if one of us invites you somewhere you almost never come.”

 

Mac could pretend KJ was wrong, but in the back of her mind she knew her friend was right. “What do you want, Kaje? It’s not like we saw each other all the time before!” Her tone was much louder and angrier than she had intended. She noticed that happened a lot, and got worse as time went on.

 

Mac expected KJ to yell back. Usually, when she got angry, Erin and Tiffany would just ignore it, but KJ would get mad. This time, KJ opened her mouth to say something, but than closed it. For some reason that made Mac angry, and she kept talking before she could stop herself.

 

“We’re supposed to pretend that nothing happened, aren’t we? That everything’s just normal? That’s what I’m doing.” Mac didn’t know why she was trying to start a fight with KJ; she didn’t want to. She just felt it happening and didn’t know how to stop.

 

“So, you want us to just act like we hardly even know you?” KJ said, her tone steady and unflappable.

Mac said nothing for a moment. “No.” she said, finally. “No, of course I don’t.” She braced herself. “Did you....did you tell your parents? About, about you?”

 

 

KJ stared at the ground and looked embarrassed. “Yeah. I told them and I told my grandmother, and they were okay with it.” KJ seemed to be waiting for Mac to say something, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

 

KJ seemed to be considering saying something else when her mom arrived, and they got in the car. KJ’s mother asked where to drop Mac off. Mac said she could walk home from where they’d picked her up. “You probably shouldn’t walk back in the cold,” KJ said, “I can walk with you if we drop you off a few houses down from your place.” KJ knew Mac probably wouldn’t want anyone--least of all KJ’s mom--to see her house.

 

Mac agreed, and so did KJ’s mom. KJ walked Mac to her house, and gave her a quick hug before heading back to her mom’s car.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who has been twelve knows how it much sucks.
> 
> Anyway, they'll be a good amount of Mac/KJ over the next couple of chapters. It's not going to be easy for either of them, but they're tough kids and at least they've got each other.
> 
> I'm having some trouble figuring out KJ's voice. It's harder when I can't be inside her head. Maybe I'll switch to her point of view a couple of times over the next few chapters....I don't know. I'll also work Tiffany and Erin in at some point, but I want to make sure I don't throw in more characters than I can handle.
> 
> I was going to have Mac and KJ go see a movie, but apparently nothing even remotely age appropriate came out in January 1989. Someone WILL go see the Batman movie once we get to June, though.
> 
> I also can't confirm or deny the existence of a Starbucks in Cleveland, Ohio, 1989. Apparently they had 33 locations in 1988, and 55 in 1989. January of '89 I guess is somewhere between the two.


	3. Trusting Desire, Starting To Learn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter three!
> 
> Lots of stuff happens towards the end.

The weather in February was just like it was in January, but worse. For all practical purposes, Mac couldn’t really be out of the house all day the way she usually tried to be. Her bike couldn’t move that well in the snow, and even if it could, she’d get sick if she was out in the cold for to long.

 

The kids at school, mostly the girls, were talking about Valentine’s Day, and were always and talking the kids--like Mac--who didn’t have “dates.” One day Mac got into a screaming match about it with a boy named Sam, who lived a few houses down from her. Her brother had warned her to stay away from Sam’s house. “My dad told me something about your mom, Mac.” he said, “He said--he said you’re not really a Coyle. Get it?” Mac saw red and her fist ended up in his face.

Sam reported her to the principal, but the adults at Stony Stream middle school rarely cared about what the students were up to, so long as they were still getting paid. Mac thought this meant she had gotten off easy.

A few days later, the new boy who had gotten Tiff’s route got his bike stolen, probably by some highschoolers, and so Mac helped him finish his route the next few mornings. Eventually his parents agreed to drive him until they figured out what to do about his old bike.

Mac hadn’t really had anything in mind when she done it. He was someone she worked with, which meant she couldn’t just leave him in the dust. Plus, it was Tiffany’s old route that he had, and Mac couldn’t let Tiff’s route go unfinished. The boy was in math class with her, and thanked her at recess a few days later.

After that, everyone started spreading rumors that he was her boyfriend. This should have been better, because it stopped the teasing, but for some reason it just made her feel uncomfortable. Mac didn’t really mind being teased.

It was after days of silence that Mac’s father confronted her. Mac was about to take out the garbage of their microwaved pizza dinner. Her brother was out. Her stepmother was still at the kitchen table, watching but never intervening, as usual. “I got a call from your school a few days ago, Mackenzie.” he said, arms folded and cold eyes glaring down at her. He’d been drinking at dinner. “I heard you got into sort of fight, that true?”

Mac was standing in the laundry room, going out through through the garage, and holding the bag of garbage. “The hell do you care?” Mac asked, and regretted it instantly.

He took a step towards her. “What did you just say to me?”

Mac’s throat closed up.

“WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?” Before Mac knew what was happening, she’d been shoved against the wall behind her. The garbage bag hit the floor. It hadn’t hurt, but none the less the room was spinning and she thought she might be sick.

Her father had blue eyes and red hair just like hers. She had perfect view of the broken washing machine they’d never bothered to fix. “I get another call about you,” he screamed, words slurred, I’m pulling you out of school and you’ll be stuck here with me all goddamn day, you hear me?”

“I hear you.” Mac said, focusing on the washing machine and not on his face.

“You’ve got five seconds to get in your room.”

Mac ran to her room as fast as she could. She didn’t cry. A long time ago she’d decided she was to old to cry.

\---  
KJ never told parents about the slurs or mocking or teasing. KJ’s family wasn’t a whining family. When they asked how school went, she told them it was fine. Sometimes she imagined telling her grandmother. But compared to everything her grandmother had gone through, complaining about 7th grade seemed out of the question.

Sometimes KJ contemplated the irony of being on a field hockey team with girls she liked less than the competitors. “You’ll laugh about all of this one day, kiddo.” her dad said on time, when she’d started to tell him about it. An extremely toned down version of it. “Middle school is supposed to suck.”

Her parents had been good when she told them she was gay. She’d waited and waited and finally announced it on Christmas. Her family didn’t celebrate Christmas, which was part of the point. On paper she wasn’t surprised they were fine with it--they were surprised, certainly, but completely fine with it--but there had still always been a small, irrational voice in her head saying that everything her parents had taught wouldn’t apply when it came to their own daughter.

But they’d been fine, and so had her grandmother. She was relieved, of course, but she felt almost guilty. After all, it wasn’t like Mac’s parents would have that reasonable of a reaction if Mac announced that she were gay. If she was gay. KJ couldn’t think of why Mac would have kissed her back in 2171 if she WASN’T gay. But Mac hadn’t said or done anything since then that implied anything one way or another.

Although Mac’s slurs had stopped. That could have just as easily been because Mac had realized what she was saying was wrong, having nothing to do with her sexuality. KJ supposed that would be just as good, though. The point was that Mac was being okay now. KJ couldn’t think of a way to thank her for that, but she was grateful for it. Although, to be fair, she would have been furious if Mac had done anything else.

KJ laid on her bed and wrote a probably-not-right answer to a math question. Sometimes she could see why her dad found middle school to be darkly amusing.

KJ’s eyes drifted across the room to her field hockey stick, leaning against the wall with her other stuff for school. She’d lost it in prehistoric times when the new kid had decided to use it to send messages to herself in the future (or the past, KJ supposed, depending on how you looked at it). But when they’d hit the reset button on everything, it had reappeared completely unharmed.

Sometimes KJ wondered about that one man from prehistoric times. She could still see his face--or what was left of it--in her head sometimes.

Was there some kind of line, between the people who were willing to kill someone and the people who weren’t? She hadn’t meant to do it. She told herself that often, and it was true--him dying never even crossed her mind. But just the same she couldn’t quite call it an accident. It was somewhere in between, really. She meant to hurt him, and she got carried away, and then she didn’t stop.

 

It was possible he wasn’t even dead anymore. Destroying time travel should have prevented his death. It may have prevented his birth, too (KJ hadn’t even thought of that), but at least his death. Did it make it any difference, though? She hadn’t thought it would be undone when she did it.

She didn’t think about it as much anymore compared to how it was in the beginning. For all practical purposes, she’d moved on. But sometimes, she’d be eating dinner with parents, talking about whatever, and all of a sudden it would just pop into her head. That her parents’ daughter was a murder, and they wold never know. What would they think of her, if they did know? Certainly they’d think of her differently. Maybe they’d agree she was justified, but it would be different.  
***  
For the other kids at school, Mac’s fight with Sam wasn’t much to talk about. Things like this happened often, sometimes to Mac and sometimes to other kids, but often. No one made much of a fuss over it. At first the story was told and exaggerated. Mac didn’t even hear the final versions of it. But than it fizzled out, and everything was back to normal.

Mac’s father had stopped speaking to her. It wasn’t like she was talked to much anyway, and she certainly didn’t miss him, but the silence made her think something worse might have been coming. So she gave up and stayed out anyway, and learned to ignore the cold.

It wasn’t like her brother never got in trouble at school. He’d gotten in worse trouble than this. Hell, Mac had gotten in worse trouble. But this was the first her father had heard about her--the school’s calls home always went to voicemail, and Mac would delete them before either of her parents noticed they were there--and Mac’s father didn’t seem to care as much when her brother did something wrong.

One evening, bored and tired, Mac decided to time how long it would take her to get around the entire neighborhood on her bike. Probably a pretty long time; it was a big neighborhood, and was either boringly safe or dangerous depending on the part you were in. It would take longer in the snow.

Mac’s bike creaked and shook as she went as fast as she could make it go. She was sure enough that she wouldn’t fall, and even if she did, she didn’t mind much. The houses got bigger and nice the further she went. She used to go and look at nicer houses and wonder what it must be like to live in them.

Now she didn’t look at them. She kept riding and stared straight ahead, trying and mostly succeeding to keep the bike from wobbling. She made her way to KJ’s part of the neighborhood, and found herself wondering if her friend was home.

She couldn’t really go up and knock on the door. It would be weird. She sort of knew KJ’s parents, but not much past brief conversations. Plus, their family was probably having dinner or something, if they were even home. Mac found that she had to know.

She stopped her bike outside the house of some old man she’d stopped delivering papers too after he’d “forgotten” to pay her one two many times, and left her bike sideways outside his lawn.

The closer Mac got to KJ’s house, she realized the taller girl’s family must have been having some sort of party or something. There was voices and the sounds of people talking, and everyone seemed to be in the backyard.

Mac stayed a careful distance from the house. She wasn’t going to be mistaken for a creep. The party turned out to be mostly adults wearing suits and drinking champagne and stuff. Mac wondered how adults seemed be entertained by the most boring things. She recognized each of KJ’s parents, but didn’t see KJ.

Irritated, she was about to give up when she saw her friend sitting alone and bored-looking at one of the tables. There weren’t any other people, but there cups and plates and coats which showed people had been sitting there before.

Mac couldn’t think of a real reason why she should stay. She actually felt like she was supposed to leave. She turned around and went to head back to her bike, but then stopped and thought about. Why should she leave, anyway? It wasn’t like she was doing anything wrong; she was just going and talking to one of her friends. She didn’t think she would have left if it were Tiffany or Erin.

She cut down KJ’s driveway, hoping that nobody would notice her. She was sort of trespassing. “Hey, Kaje!” she said, when she got close enough that her friend should have been able to see.

“Mac?” KJ asked, looking confused. “What in the world are you doing here?” 

 

Mac paused for a second, feeling uncomfortable. Why was she uncomfortable? Nothing.” Mac said, as neutrally as she could sound, “Thought you looked bored. What the fuck is this thing, anyway?”  
“My dad’s having a party with guys from his company,” KJ sighed, “At the last minute he said I should come down and them or something.”

“Oh.” Mac wondered if she should go, and stared to think that she shouldn’t have come in the first place.

“You can come inside, if you want,” KJ said, “My parents probably won’t mind.” She stood up. “But you should probably go in through the front, unless you want to meet a bunch of my dad’s coworkers.” She added, with a scoff.

 

KJ brushed against Mac as she walked past. Mac backed up quickly, and tried to brush it off and follow her friend to the front door. It was unlocked, probably because of when the guests had first come in, and KJ opened it to an empty house.

Empty of people, anyway. There was all sorts of furniture and decorations and wall-hangings. The floor was clean, though. Mac was used to having to avoid stepping on clothes or empty bottles when she walked around her own house.

 

KJ’s house also had an upstairs, with a carpeted floor. There were lots of different rooms--KJ’s parents’ bedroom, KJ’s bedroom, a guest room, and what KJ described a game room. She took Mac to her own bedroom.

Mac had never been in it before. Whenever she’d met KJ outside of delivering newspapers, it had always been somewhere else. No one’s house. It wasn’t like she’d never been invited before, but she’d always said no. It turned out KJ’s bedroom was big, with a clean floor and a bunk bed.

It smelled good, too. Like whatever perfume KJ used. Mac told herself she shouldn’t have been there, and that she should leave. After all, KJ’s parents hadn’t invited her in, and also it was pretty late now and she probably should have been home. Her parents sometimes got angry if she came home late.

“Well, this it is.” KJ said, shutting the door. “I still can’t believe this is the first time you’ve been up here, Mac.” KJ thought Mac looked nervous, which was strange for her.

“I’m here now, aren’t I?” Mac shot back. “Anyway, it’s pretty rad, Kaje.”

“Thanks.” KJ said, and went to go sit on her bed. She always slept in the top bunk, which to her was the only point of having a bunk bed, but it seemed like it was unnecessary to climb all the way to the top whenever she wanted to sit somewhere.

“What the heck is ABBA?” Mac pointed to the poster that hung up on the wall above KJ’s closet.

“It’s a band,” KJ blinked. “I’m surprised you haven’t heard of them. They’re pretty good.” she added, “I can play you some of their stuff, if you’d like.”

“Nah, that’s alright.” Mac said. She had never found it remotely difficult to talk to KJ, but for some reason right now she was finding it hard to think of anything to say. Everything that crossed her mind seemed stupid, and KJ wasn’t stupid.

Mac found herself focusing on a cardboard box. “What’s in that thing?” she asked, pointing to it.

KJ hesitated, not sure if she should say or not. Well, she decided, Mac was one of the only people who she could tell about something like that. “Those are...” KJ tried to think of how to explain it, and ultimately gave up. “Remember the rocket boots? That’s them.”

“Seriously?” Mac asked, immediately sitting down and opening the box without even thinking to ask if that was okay. There they were. The red-and-blue boots that short force fields out of them that KJ had taken from the time machine. “How’d you keep these from getting erased from the universe or whatever?”

“I have no idea.” KJ said, “I was still wearing them when we got back here, and that was that. I can't think of how to get rid of them, and obviously I can’t show them to anyone, so that’s that.”

“Can they still do stuff?”  
“I don’t know,” KJ said, “I haven’t tried.”

Mac stared at them for a long time. “Do you ever wonder if maybe it didn’t work?” she said, finally, quietly.

“If what didn’t work?”

 

“The whole reset thing,” Mac exclaimed, sounding angry all of a sudden. “If everything’s gonna be just like it was, and Tiff and I will be fucking dead by 2016.”

“Mac.” KJ didn’t know what to say. All of sorts of things didn’t make sense about what had ended up happening to them, but they’d all seen the reset happen. It had happened. That was it. “Why do you think that?”  
“Nothing. I’m probably just being stupid,” Mac said, dropping to the ground, instead of sitting next to KJ on the bed. “I just don’t see why we still remember that whole thing, and now why you still have the freaking boots.”

“Well, the boots probably weren’t created as part of the time machine.” KJ pointed out, “Qaunta probably had them before then. And as for the memories, I don’t know. But I’m sure it’s fine.”

Mac couldn’t understand how KJ always seemed to know and understand everything. Nothing made sense to Mac, but KJ seemed to have all the answers. “You’re probably right. It’s just freaking weird.”

“I know.” KJ said. She tried to think of what she say that wouldn’t freak Mac out. “If anything happens, though, Mac, I’ll be here.”  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” KJ sighed, “Nothing at all.”

Mac looked back at the boots. Strangely, she smiled. “Remember when you blasted the lights out of that creep at the hospital?” she asked.

KJ laughed, “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but you’re the one who actually saved us.”

“That’s not true. You got us to the rooftop.” KJ said.

“A lot happened on that rooftop, didn’t it?” Mac asked. She took a deep breath. She tried not to think about her parents or the kids at school or anything. She tried just to think about KJ.

“You--you never said anything after that.” KJ said, carefully. “I thought you didn’t want us to talk about it.”

“I didn’t,” Mac said, she went and sat next to KJ. “I didn’t then, and--and I still don’t, but--I mean, it’s like what I said then, right? Guess I can’t avoid it.”  
KJ was confused. “Mac, what do you--”

Mac leaned forward and kissed KJ on the lips before she could think better of it. She stopped after a moment, stared at KJ. Mac hands felt shaky. Part of her like she’d just done something horribly and unforgivingly wrong. But most of her felt she’d just done the best thing in the world.

 

“You’re--you’re sure your okay with this?” KJ asked, after a long pause.

“I don’t know,” Mac said, staring down at her combat boots and at KJ’s sneakers. “I mean, I’d rather have it than not, all right?” She had to force out the words, but she knew they were true. 

She loved KJ. She could try to deny it. She wanted to deny it. Sometimes she wished she didn’t love her. But she thought about the way she felt when she looked into her friends’ brown eyes, and she knew she wouldn’t give that feeling away for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original plan was to make this fic 24 chapters, each about 2,000 words long. I was going to have two chapters for each month in the story, and it would cover twelve months. (The year 1989).
> 
> This chapter ended being longer, though. So, now I think what I'm going is have one 4,000 word chapter for each month, instead of two 2,000 words one. However, January and December will both have two chapters.
> 
> It'll still end being the same length total, just divided differently.
> 
> Also, just so you guys know, KJ's right. Everything was definitely reset. Mac and Tiffany are fine. Mac's just understandably nervous. This is meant to be a pretty happy fic.
> 
> Thank you guys for reading and I hope you like it! Chapter four should be out in a couple days.


	4. I Wish The Wish, Of A Wish You Dreamed, Of A Far Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter four. Slightly shorter than the last one, but it seemed like a good place to end it.

The beginning of March brought rain and wind and clouds, but the weather got warmer and the snow melted, which made bike riding easier.  
"My parents said that when they were kids, it wasn’t this warm until like April or May," Erin said one morning. "They're saying climate change from factories and stuff is going to--"

 

"Doesn't matter," Mac replied, lighting a cigarette. "Everything's still gonna be here in a hundred years or whatever.”

 

Erin went on to talk about something she'd read or seen where people start trying to move to a new planet after Earth becomes unlivable.

Mac tried her best to keep out of trouble at school. She knew what her father said about what would happen if she screwed up again, and she knew enough to take him seriously. But sometimes she almost wanted to fight or something.   
Not always because she was actually angry. Sometimes it was that--she wasn't the only one to notice she got mad quicker then she used too, and she would think about her father, and she would be bothered by it, and in turn would just angrier--but sometimes it was more because she knew it would make her father mad. Sometimes he'd be talking. About what he thought religion was. Or about why he thought the AIDS virus thing was happening. And she would think, that's me. What would you freaking do if you knew that was me?

She couldn't tell him. She knew that. She wanted too, sometimes, just because of how upset it would make him. But it would be stupid--she was a twelve-and-a-half year old kid with no where to go. What she thought about more was how her brother would react. He said things like what her father said, and he probably believed them. She wondered if he might act differently if it were her. Probably he wouldn’t.

Still, Mac thought, late one night when she stared at her ceiling, things weren’t so bad. Hell, they were good. Better than they’d been for maybe as long as she could remember. Tiffany had gotten a skateboard from her parents for her birthday, and now it was the first time since than that the weather had been nice enough to use it. Tiff let the others borrow it sometimes, and Mac discovered she was good at skateboarding.

She liked it, too. In many ways she liked it better than riding her bike. Especially now that her bike had gotten to the point where it where it wobbled a lot when she tried to ride it. By now she’d had her paper route for about two years, maybe a little bit more, and with the exception of comic books and movie tickets, she hardly spent the money on anything. She probably had enough for an old bike, and thought about trying to get a skateboard, instead. You couldn’t deliver papers as well with skateboard, though, she thought.

Mac thought about KJ. They weren’t really old enough to date. Mac always scoffed at the girls in her school who said they had ‘boyfriends’ when they were only her age. Still, Mac started hanging out at KJ’s house more, and since KJ had a bunk bed, sometimes Mac would spend the night there when she didn’t want to be at home. Mac would have dinner with KJ’s family a lot, and she liked KJ’s parents. She hadn’t thought she would, usually she didn’t like adults, and ones with a lot of money were usually worse than most. But KJ’s parents were nice, and Mac wondered vaguely if they knew about her and KJ. Of course, KJ had said she wouldn’t tell anyone about Mac. Even her parents. But Mac wondered, because sometimes, only sometimes, she and KJ kissed, and that seemed like something a parent might somehow know about, even if they weren’t told.

The police officers in Stony Stream yelled at Mac a lot. Mac didn’t think this was really fair. Just because a few times on Friday nights they had to come to the house and tell her father to stop whatever he was doing didn’t mean that Mac was doing anything wrong when she rode her bike around. Mac started doing graffiti. Not that often, and not on anything that seemed important, but all over the school and on the playground for little kids at the park, and places like that. She hadn’t gotten caught, so far.

Mac--and, as far as she knew--KJ and Tiffany had never met Erin’s parents. “They’re pretty busy with work and things,” Erin said, “And, anyway, they don’t really like to have people at the house a lot.” But they saw Erin’s little sister, Missy, sometimes when Erin had to babysit her. Missy had recently turned seven. Whenever Mac saw her, she thought about the pilot she would be in 2016, and had to fight the urge to mention it.  
They did meet Tiffany’s parents a few times, mostly when they were in Tiffany’s driveway using the skateboard. They seemed fine to Mac, but Tiff didn’t seem like she always got along with them, at least not lately. “You want to design games or something, don’t you, Tiff?” Mac asked one day, in Tiffany’s living room.

“Yeah.” Tiffany said, “Something like that, probably. I don’t really know.”

“Your folks don’t want you to?” Mac asked. She wanted to smoke, but she guessed that probably Tiffany’s family wouldn't like that in their house. KJ’s parents certainly didn’t.

“Nah, they’re basically fine with me doing whatever I want,” Tiffany said, “As long as I’m at whatever it is.”

Mac didn’t say it, but she thought Tiffany’s parents would making a big deal out of nothing. Tiff was really smart, and she was good with computers and stuff. Mac couldn’t imagine she wouldn’t do really well. Instead, Mac just said, “Sorry, Tiff. That sucks.” And waited until they could go outside so that Mac could smoke.

Mac’s brother took her to the record store on weekends. “Records are becoming cheaper, Mackenzie. You know that?” he asked day, while he was blasting the radio in the car. “Because people are using cassette tapes and CDs instead. We get a lot of records now, when they come back into fashion, we can sell them and make more.”

Mac didn’t care about that end of it to much, but she started an pretty decent record collection in her room. Her brother didn’t like it that much when she used his record player, but KJ’s mom had one that Mac could usually use when she wanted to play music.

Easter came. Mac didn’t really have that much of an opinion on holidays. She liked Halloween and she liked New Year’s. Christmas and Thanksgiving were fine. Even though Mac didn’t like school, it was better than being at home, which was the problem with holidays sometimes. On weekends she would usually ride her bike and try to keep out of the house, and sometimes her brother would take her somewhere, if he wasn’t busy. But on holidays she was usually expected to stay in the house, so she would lock herself in her room and blast music, trying to block out the sounds of her parents downstairs.

March had been pretty warm, but it was still cold early in the morning on Easter when Mac went to go to church with her father and her brother, who had gotten home late the night before. Mac got into the back of the car. “Where’s Alice?” she asked, not bothering to put on a seatbelt.  
“You call her mom,” Mac’s father answered, “And she’s not going.”

Mac knew better than to ask why. And she knew better than to point out that if she didn’t want to go, there’s no way her father would allow it. She didn’t actually mind going or anything, but still.

After they got home, Mac’s father went to go do something outside, and Alice was, apparently, still asleep. Mac’s brother was going out with friends. “I’ll catch you later, alright, Mackenzie?” he said, “Just hang tight and we can go to a movie or something tonight.”

Mac didn’t like the friends her brother was always going out with. They seemed stupid, like the kids in her school, and they were loud and made weird jokes. Still, if her brother thought they were worth hanging out with, he was probably right. He was usually right.

Mac read comics in her room. The Flash gotten a new writer a couple of years before that, and he was pretty good. Another writer had a series about a bunch of kids who were superheroes, a lot of them were the sidekicks of the ones like Batman and Wonder Woman and stuff. It had been around for a pretty long time by then, and Mac hadn’t been able to read the whole thing, but it was pretty good.

The superhero comic stuff was okay, but Mac’s favorite comic was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which wasn’t put out by a really big publishing company or anything. It was darker than most of the comics, and it was weirder, and Mac liked that. Now it brought memories of 2171, which she had mixed feelings about. The code names they’d used. Adult Tiffany, and how she had saved them.

When Mac had actually been time traveling and going to all those different times chased by all those different people, all she’d wanted was for it to end so she could get back to 1988. Now she sort of missed it, though, in a weird way. She didn’t seriously want to relive it, but she missed it. And it was weird to think that, in many ways, it had never happened at all.

Mac went to KJ’s house later that day. Her parents didn’t care, and she didn’t think KJ’s parents would mind, either. They wouldn’t really be doing anything on Easter, but KJ was probably off school.

It was KJ’s mom who answered the door when Mac knocked. Mac hadn’t thought of this--she’d just assumed that it would be KJ. Still, her mom hadn’t seemed to mind, and told Mac she could go upstairs. KJ had apparently been doing homework. She was reading books for her literature class, and Mac recognized some of them as ones her brother had read when he was in high school, a few years older than KJ. She remembered he’d complained about most of them, but liked a couple.

“You still haven’t tested out the boots yet, have you?” Mac asked, referring to the rocket boots and expecting the answer.

“Nope.” KJ said, looking up from the book she was reading. “I told you before, Mac, it’s not a good idea. I mean, what if someone sees us or something? That could cause, like, any numbers of problems.”

“Can you turn them on without wearing them?” Mac asked. To her, weather or not they still worked was crucial. In Mac's mind, she was pretty sure the rocket boots had been created as part of the time machine. After all, Qaunta and her sister and those other people had created a lot of stuff to make sure that traveling through time wouldn’t be that dangerous, and the boots had probably been part of that.  
If they’d stopped Qaunta from ever trying to time travel, than there was no way there should have been the boots. They should have disappeared, but they didn’t If they still worked, than maybe something had gone wrong, and everything still happened. If they didn’t....well, Mac didn’t know what that would mean, really, but at least it was something.

“I don’t know,” KJ said, putting down the book and sitting up on the bed. “I never tried. You turn them on by pressing them together, so probably.”  
“What, like The Wizard Of Oz or whatever?” Mac asked, studying them.

“I guess,” KJ sighed. “Anyway, I still think we shouldn’t. What if my parents come up and ask what were doing?”  
“You could lock the door.”

KJ considered it for a second. “I guess, Mac,” she said, “If only to get you to stop asking about it.” She added, and Mac smiled. KJ locked the door.  
“Alright,” she said, leaning on it. “Be careful. Don’t...stand in front of them or anything.”

Mac lifted them. They were pretty heavy, much more than most shoes, even the boots her father would put on when he went to work. She shoved the heels together and waited, bracing herself. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing.  
“I guess not,” KJ said.

“Yeah,” Mac replied. She was sort of surprised, and....not as relieved as she’d hoped she’d be. Still, it was better than the alternative.  
Mac had dinner at KJ’s house and than went home that night. Her brother didn’t end up getting home until pretty late. “Sorry, sis,” he said, when he did get home. “Traffic and shit.”

Mac was reading a book she’d gotten from the library in the living room, her parents asleep. “Whatever.” Mac said, sharply. She didn’t usually get mad at her brother, but lately she’d been kind of frustrated with him. She felt pretty bad about it, and thought she might be being unreasonable, or if maybe he was different, or what it was.

But she couldn’t help but think about how KJ’s parents, who hardly even knew her, were around more than her own brother was.  
Mac went on her bike later that night, and spray-painted her nickname a few places. No one saw her and she doubted if the police would know who she was. They knew her last name because they knew her family, but that was probably it. Than she went to the park and watched the stars as the night went on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that. Chapter Five should be up next Wednesday.
> 
> Finally I got Tiffany and Erin in it a bit....they'll be around more in the upcoming chapters.
> 
>  
> 
> Chapter title comes from Paul Shapera's AMAZING indie rock song "The Lovers". Which, if you gender swap it, really makes me think of Mac and KJ.


	5. When You're Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the chapter. Sorry for the delay.

Spring break was usually in April, and it was early for Mac’s school this year, happening in April’s second week.

Mac’s family didn’t usually go on trips, except to visit her uncle sometimes, and every once in awhile her brother would go somewhere with his friends. Last summer Mac’s father and uncle had gotten into some kind of disagreement at a family reunion, Mac wasn’t exactly sure what it was about, but that meant that this year they wouldn’t be visiting him.

Mac was fine with this. He didn’t live far away, so it wasn’t like she got to go really far or anything, and his house usually smelled weird. And she didn’t like him much--he was like her father, but he wasn’t her father, which is Mac’s mind made it different.

She rode her bike a lot, now that she was off of school, to see how far she could get. She’d done this before, in the past, but she was older now and could ride her bike quicker. She could get all the way into downtown Cleveland most days, and she liked it there better than in Stony Stream.

 

Her brother had, for some amount of time, had a girlfriend. Mac had never had a conversation with her, but had heard her brother mention her, and had seen her a few times when he went out with his friends. Mac thought they’d probably been dating for a fairly long time, because she was pretty sure they’d met in high school.

Mac’s brother’s girlfriend had dumped him right at the beginning of April, and he’d been complaining about it since then. Mac didn’t know what happened, but her brother was obviously upset. The first few days he’d called in sick for his job, and even once he went back to work, he would spend mornings and nights in his room blasting music.

Mac tried not think about something like that happening to her and KJ.

Mac’s school had spring break earlier than most of the schools in the area, so when it ended KJ, Erin and Tiffany would still be on break. The night before her school came back, she was eating dinner with her parents and brother, when her brother said that he was moving in with some of his friends in May. “They’re renting a place closer to the city,” he explained, as Mac stared at him, not saying anything. “And they invited me to come and live with them, so I thought I would.”

“About time.” Mac’s father grumbled, and looked back at his food. Alice only shrugged and kept eating.

Mac stared at the dinner of take-out Chinese food, and dropped her fork onto her plate. It shook. She stood up, shoving her chair behind her, and walked off, clenching her teeth and not saying anything.

“Mackenzie, come back here.” Her brother said, with a sigh. Mac ignored him and walked down the hall, grabbed the door to her room, slamming it so hard it shook the walls, and locked the door. She walked carelessly over the mess on her floor and sat down by the window, heart thumping.

How could he? She knew it would happen at some point. He was basically an adult, after all. But how could she stay alone in that house? Mac tried to reason it in her mind. He could come and visit, probably. He wasn’t moving that far away. She could probably ride her bike there if she really tried.

She didn’t see him that much, anyway, but that was really something that seemed more like his fault. She breathed hard, eyes focused on the door. She’d half-thought he would come after her. But he was usually good about leaving her alone when that was what she wanted.

Mac wondered what it would be like to be living in the house without her brother. She didn’t think it would be all that different, really. Her father never seemed to get angry at her brother the way he did with her. Maybe he did once or twice, but not that she could remember. Or maybe that was just because, by the time she was old enough to really remember things, her brother was old enough to be away from the house most of the time.

Alice never really paid attention to him. Mac had been pretty young when Alice had married her dad, but her brother had been a teenager. Alice stayed away from both of them for the most part. Mac remembered a couple of times Alice had said that she had wished her husband didn’t have kids.

Mac heard something coming from outside and looked out the window. Her brother was getting into the car he’d gotten with his work money, and was going somewhere. He’d grown his hair long in the back, and most of the time it brushed over his eyes. He was wearing old jeans and a t-shirt, and was smoking a cigarette.

The car was was blue, but the color had faded. It still had cranks that you had to use when you wanted to roll down the windows. Mac had only been in it once, because her brother didn’t like to use it except for when he was going out with his friends.

***  
She delivered her papers by herself the next day, since Erin and KJ were still off from school, Erin had gone to visit her grandparents. KJ and her family were in Michigan, for some reason. KJ said they went there almost every year in Spring, because the place they went to got too crowded over the summer.

Mac didn’t remember KJ mentioning going there before, but it occurred to her that, in the past, she probably wouldn’t have noticed to much. They hadn’t really hung out all that often, before. They’d see each other around and sometimes stop to say hi, and they did their routes together with Tiffany when they could, but it had been much less often than it was now.

KJ and Erin must have gotten friends of theirs to take over their routes. Mac knew that was what kids usually did when they couldn't do their route for a few days. Mac hadn’t asked about it at the time.

She got her route done quicker than she usually did that morning, and rode her bike to school instead of taking the bus. She got there early. She sat on the ground outside the school and lit a cigarette. She smoked it for awhile, and soon the students started to arrive.

The kids got off quickly and walked into the school, and Mac didn’t feel like trying to shove her way through them, so she just sat and watched and waited for them to all get in, so she could come in after.

She got to class and sat down, waiting for it to start.

The day went by relatively quickly. In the classes where Mac sat near the back, she could listen to music and the teachers wouldn’t notice or didn’t care. Some of the other kids probably saw, but they never bothered to say anything.

At lunch and recess the past few days, Mac had overheard the some of the kids had new name they were calling her. Dyke. It made her cringe. Sure, they called a lot of kids that. And it wasn’t like they put a ton of thought into the insults they used on people. But it bothered her.

Mac knew better than to get into a fight about it. She really did. She could tell herself it wasn’t worth it, and it was stupid, and that it would just lead to her getting into more trouble. But she couldn’t help it. Maybe she could have before, or maybe if the circumstances were different. It had been Ronnie who had been using the name the most, maybe she was the one who came up with it, Mac wasn’t sure, she didn’t care too about who it was.

At the end of lunch break that day, Mac was going to put away her tray, when she heard Ronnie say it again, to the kids she was sitting at the table with. Mac let the tray drop onto the tile ground, and it made a satisfying crash. “The heck did you just say?” Mac asked, turning to face Ronnie.

“Come on, we all know it, Mac.” Ronnie said, with a smile, and in that moment Mac found herself feeling almost sad. Not because she was hurt or anything, she didn’t give care about what Ronnie or the other kids said, but just....disappointed. Why did they feel the need to pick on random people who they didn’t even know, outside of school? What was even the point?

“Just stop it.” Mac said.

“Oh, come on,” Ronnie said, “What are you gonna do? You’re old enough that my dad can jut arrest you, just like he does to your dad, and your brother, and everyone else in your family.”

Mac blinked. Even the other kids at the table were quiet. “Nothing. I’ll save it for your dad when he arrests me.” She said, halfheartedly.

The rest of the day was fine. Mac got out of school in the middle of the afternoon and, rather than going home, went to the library. She would go there a lot when she was younger, but had been going less often recently. Not because of any real reason, just because she hadn’t felt like reading much lately. She went into the section where the adult books were, because she thought the kids section would probably have people from school who she didn’t want to see, and looked around.

She ended up finding a book that seemed pretty interesting, and she took it over to one of the tables and realized she enjoyed it. She’d missed actually reading. She put the book back so she didn’t have to carry it with her while she looked around, but she thought she would try to check it out and take it home.

She felt around in her pocket to make sure that she still had her library card. She hadn’t used it in so long, that she couldn’t be sure until she found it.

She knew the library had gotten a computer system, and she went to go look at it. It looked pretty different than the ones she’d seen in 2016. It was gray, and looked almost like it was separated into three parts. The top looked almost like a really small old television, and the middle part beneath it looked kind of like a printer. Attached to it was a keyboard. It had the same apple symbol on it, though.

There was a long line to use it and there wasn’t really anything that Mac felt like using it for, so she left. The librarian who’d been working when she would come a lot a few years wasn’t around. Mac wondered if she might have retired. 

Mac knew that her brother came here often. Sometimes he’d ask her if she wanted to come, and that’s how she ended up being there a lot. When she didn’t come, sometimes he’d bring back books and tell her to read them, and usually they were ones she didn’t like that much. She wondered if he’d go to a different library once he lived in Cleveland. She thought Cleveland probably had a better library than the one in Stony Stream.

She checked out the book, and rode her bike back to the house. Her parents weren’t around when she came in, and when she looked in the garage she saw the car wasn’t there. They must have gone out. Mac did her homework in the kitchen. She finished it quickly and went to her room.

KJ would be back in three days. Mac sighed. Three days wasn’t a long time, and she would have school and stuff, but it felt like awhile.

She went to where she kept her paper money, which she’d been mostly saving for two years, and counted it. She’d never actually counted it--she would just take out the amount she needed when she wanted to buy something--and was surprised at how much she had saved.

She’d keep saving it, she decided. She could probably use it more than she used to once her brother wasn’t living at home anymore. She sighed, thinking about that. She left the house again, and went to sit in her backyard, which she liked better than the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter should be up on Wednesday.
> 
> This one was also kind of short. They'll get longer again once it gets to more interesting months.
> 
> One of the hardest parts of writing this thing these days is coming up with the chapter titles--I should start planning them in advance.
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy this.


	6. I'm heavenly blessed and worldly wise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a chapter. I hope you guys like it.

May came sooner than Mac would have wanted it too. But time always seemed to move too quickly for her, didn't it?

Mac's brother would apparently be moving out on the 16th, almost exactly at the dead center of the month. One day--Mac didn't feel like trying to make the trip on her bike--she took a bus to around where he would be moving to. She didn't tell him she was doing it. She didn't think he would mind, she couldn't think of a reason why he would, but it just seemed like one of those things she shouldn't mention.

She wasn't completely sure what the address was, he hadn't mentioned it so she hadn't asked, but she was sure of the neighborhood. The houses weren't painted, really, so you could see the bricks they were made of. They looked sort of old, but Mac guessed they weren't--this wasn't one of the really old parts of the city, so they'd probably been built in the last ten or twenty years or whatever. The windows were barred, like in a prison, and Mac thought that was pretty cool. It was small house, most of the houses in that neighborhood were, and there wasn't a yard.  
Mac wasn't really supposed to be that close to the city by herself. Even her parents said it was dangerous, and her brother told her all kinds of weird stories about what could happen when you went places like that alone. 

Mac wasn't afraid of stuff like that, and couldn't remember a time when she had been. She knew she could get around places on her own. She knew how to get back to her house, and she could tell which people she should stay away from, and which houses not to go near. Other kids she'd seen, sometimes, kids at her school, got freaked out going places alone or where their parents said might be dangerous, but never her.

Certainly now, after everything she'd seen--really, she'd seen more than anyone in the world ever had or ever would see, other than her friends--nothing that scared some other kids could scare her. She'd gone through all sorts of different time periods, one of which she'd been in completely alone. She thought she saw the end of her life. She kind of fought in a war. She almost got captured time after time. And, during all of that, the people around her, the people putting her in danger, had been adults.

Adulthood was inevitable, and Mac wondered if she'd become like every other adult she'd ever known. Tired of the world, having forgotten everything interesting about it, and trying to make kids do the same? Or, maybe, worse, would she end up like her parents?  Every other person in her dad's family had ended up like him, and she didn't even know what happened to her stepmother's family--when meant Alice didn't speak to them anymore. A whole neighborhood of people waited for her to end up like that, maybe she would. She didn't think so, though. It still bothered her, she still debated it, sometimes she thought it was impossible she wouldn't--that she'd been doomed to be like them from the moment she was both. 

But she'd done so much, and seen so much that they wouldn't understand, things they wouldn't ever be okay with. That made her different, or at least it meant she could be different. She knew what happened if you spent so much time wondering about what would happen, instead of just letting it go by, and she didn't want to spend her time that way. So she told herself she could be different and went with that, and mostly she could believe it, except for some nights when she would sit in bed and stare at the ceiling and wonder about the future, and what would come, and who she would be. Her future really was a blank space now--anything could fill it. Maybe, if everyone was wrong about their only being one timeline, then there was some timeline somewhere, still, were it was all decided, but that wasn't this one. 

This one was free. Terrifyingly free, sometimes, in Mac's mind.

A year ago she'd thought ending up like her parents was her only future. No matter what she did, she'd be like them. She didn't know than, though. There were so many things than that she hadn't known that she knew now.

***  
Erin’s birthday was in May, Mac learned a couple of weeks before. Tiffany told her. She didn’t know how Tiffany knew, but apparently Tiff hadn’t known until recently, either. “How come you didn’t us earlier, Erin?” Mac asked one day.

“I don’t know,” Erin replied, “My parents don’t usually make a big deal about that stuff.”

 

School started back after summer earlier in Ohio compared to some other places; it usually got back early in August. It let out around the same time as other schools, though, in mid to late June, in about a month.

Mac was basically looking forward to summer. She’d have less of an excuse to be out of the house, and she didn’t like that, but that didn’t mean that she HAD to be home. Plus, it would give her more time to do other stuff that she liked to do, instead of having to go to school.

Delivering papers was best in the spring and the fall, because the weather was nicer. Summer was to hot and winter was way too cold and dark, but it was easy now, when the weather was nice and it got light early.

Lots of kids, Mac thought, were probably trying to get paper routes now because school was getting out soon. Mac wondered if any of them would be girls, or if it would be boys like it was before she got her route.

Her route had been her brother’s before it was hers, so she didn’t know how most people got them, or even knew they were available. He’d had it for years, for as long as Mac could remember, but than one day it was in the middle of winter, he was about seventeen. He came over to her room after school, “Hey, Mackenzie, how’d you like to earn some money?” he asked, and she’d been interested in at least hearing it.

He told her that he decided he was too old to have a paper route, and that he was tired of getting up so early to go out in the cold in the winter, and wanted to see if she’d want his route so it could stay in the family. Mac agreed, thinking it was something to do and it be cool, and, anyway, she wanted to have money, and that wasn’t easy to come by when you were a kid. 

She hadn’t heard of girls delivering papers before, but didn’t think there was a problem with it. She'd figured out later she was the first girl to deliver papers, at least in their area. She doubted she was the first ever. And, well, than a few others had joined. They probably wouldn't have, if not for her. That was good, probably. Definitely it had been good for her.  
***

On the day her brother moved out, Mac sat in her room and watched as he and his friends moved the boxes out to the car. Her parents weren’t home; her dad was at work and she didn’t know where her stepmom was.

After he left, Mac stopped and looked around the empty house. She was upset, but not as much as she thought she’d be. She could be fine on her own; she’d done that before. And she wouldn’t actually be alone--not really. She had KJ and Tiff and Erin, and they were all she needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There you go.
> 
> I'm pretty pleased with this one--I wanted to actually have Mac kind of start to realize that she is growing up, but that it's not COMPLETELY horrible, and actually in some ways kind of good. She is still freaked out about it, but I think she's getting over it a little, and starting to realize she can handle it.
> 
> One thing I'm not pleased with is the chapter title. I'm kind of cheating with it. Forgive me--I'm tired and I tried my best. Better one next time.
> 
> Sorry about the extra wait--turns out I need the whole week, so it it seems we are going to a Thursday updating schedule now. I preferred Wednesday, because that's comic book day, but it's my own fault for being pretty lazy. (Even with something I really enjoy writing)
> 
> The next few chapters are where, in my mind, things really start to get interesting. So that'll be cool, hopefully.
> 
>  
> 
> Enjoy the chapter. Another one will be up next week. We're nearing the halfway point in the story, and I for one can't believe it.


	7. So When You're Near Me, Darling, Can't You Hear Me?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go. First chapter I've gotten out sort of on time in weeks.

Summer seemed to come early that year. Mac would be getting off school near the end of it. 

The weather was becoming hot again, and Mac was finding delivering papers was seeming less enjoyable and more and more like a chore each day. For her, that didn’t matter so much. Work was work, it paid pretty well, and, anyway, it wasn’t really supposed to be something she enjoyed. She didn’t really expect to enjoy whatever job she got when she was older, after all. Her father worked, and he came home every day and complained about it. Mac’s brother had worked a bunch of different jobs, ones which were way easier than actual ‘grown-up’ jobs, and he’d complained about those.

For Mac, this was practice. Waiting to be an adult.

KJ, on the other hand, seemed to disagree. “I don’t know,” KJ said, one particularly hot morning, when they finished. “I just don’t enjoy it as much as I used too, Mac.” KJ, in her own mind, didn’t see why this should be a problem. She’d been doing it for over a year, and obviously she was happy she’d gotten it in the first place--it had been great, for the longest time. But now she was starting to think it had lost its edge. “And, anyway, next year I’m gonna have a lot more homework than I did this year, because I’m going to be almost in high school, and I hardly have time to make it to field hockey practice most days unless I start earlier than you guys.”

Mac didn’t like where this conversation was going. She looked away from KJ, instead in the direction of the sky. “Jeez, Kaje! It’s the best gig you can get when you’re our age.” She paused for a second, than added, “Pays well, and it doesn’t take long.”

KJ could tell Mac was upset. Obviously, that wasn’t what she wanted, and she dropped the subject. But she couldn’t help but feel like that was a little unfair. Mac got defensive quickly, and KJ often felt like she had to stay clear of many, many conversations they probably should have had because they made Mac uncomfortable.  
“You’re having dinner at my place tonight, right?” KJ asked, she grabbed the handles of her bike and turned it around. She’d have enough time to get home before she had to go to school, if she went quickly. Her parents ended up having to drive her somedays; she lived farther from her route than Mac did. They were fine with it, but of course they’d rather not have to spend the time, so KJ tried to get home quick.

“Yeah.” Mac mumbled, walking away, “I’ll see you then, I guess.” Mac had dinner at KJ’s parents’ house most nights now. Dinner at her own house had become, on some level, impossible once her brother had moved out. Mac wasn’t sure if he was keeping Mac’s father relatively quiet most days, or if something had changed about her old man recently, but things had gotten worse.

She hadn’t mentioned it to anyone, obviously. Not to Tiff, not to Erin, not even to KJ. They weren’t supposed to know what stuff was like at home for her. She was Mackenzie Coyle; she smoked cigarettes and never flinched about anything, not even when she came across older boys’ that lived near her.

In any case, for that reason, whenever she was able to spend time somewhere else, she took it. And KJ’s parents actually liked her, which she was kind of surprised by--adults usually didn’t like her, and adults like KJ’s parents in particular didn't like her.

But, for some reason, KJ’s parents seemed to be alright with her. They let her come over and even spend the night. They asked if she was okay, and how she was doing. At first they asked about her parents, too, but after awhile they stopped. Maybe KJ had told them something, or maybe they’d picked up on it based on Mac’s responses.

After that Mac went to school. She had to go home after to drop off her stuff, and her stepmother was there, but they ignored each other, which was normal.

It was still a little while before she had to go to KJ’s house to have dinner. She sat outside in one of the white folding chairs that had been thrown halfheartedly on to her porch one time, and she smoked a cigarette. Her brother used to buy them and give them to her, so lately she’d had to steal them from her parents when they were’t paying attention.

She looked at her boots. They were starting to get tattered in some places. 

She decided to start walking early, if she went slowly she wouldn’t get there that early. She felt uncomfortable about going, she always did, and she didn’t know why. She wasn’t shy, she never had been. But when it came to seeing KJ’s family that changed.

She always watched the houses when she walked to through the neighborhood. She saw the lawns, at first with overgrown grass, become greener and more even, and sometimes there were gardens or something. It seemed to Mac like a waste of time and money, to have a garden or something. It didn’t really do anything other than look nice, and the money could be used to buy books or bikes or whatever else.

KJ’s mother answered the door, and explained that her husband would be working late. Mac wasn’t exactly sure what it was that he did for work. She didn’t feel the need to ask, and they’d never mentioned it. Mac took her shoes off when she walked in, which KJ had told her was what the parents preferred.

This was something else Mac didn’t get and thought was weird.

Dinner was good. It was better than what her parents usually served, food from take-out places or stuff that could be microwaved. KJ’s family had a VHS player, and sometimes after dinner she and Mac would watch a movie. This night they were looking through the box of tapes afterwards.

KJ had suggested several, and she was almost slightly annoyed that Mac kept turning them down. “You suggest one, then.” KJ said. Mac could see the box of tapes just as easily as she could.

“I don’t know,” Mac said, standing above where KJ was sitting on the floor, and shifting her poison constantly. “We’ve gone through all of them, haven’t we?”

KJ nodded. “Yeah. You said no to each one.” Which wasn’t completely Mac’s fault--the majority of them were relatively boring ones KJ’s parents had chosen that no one else would really be interested in.

Mac sat on the ground lazily, next to KJ. “You guys don’t have anything else?”

“We have Star Wars upstairs.” KJ replied, “My mom got it from the video store. We haven’t watched it, because my father and I aren’t really into movies like that.”

“My brother saw it when it came out.” Mac said. He’d been eight-years-old at the time. Mac had been one, too young to go and certainly too young to remember going. “I guess he thought it was okay--I dunno.”

KJ didn’t like Mac’s brother. She’d only met him once or twice when he’d dropped off Mac at her house, but she didn’t like him. She also didn’t care for space movies, but wouldn’t object to watching one if it meant they could stop trying to pick one.

“We could watch it,” Mac said, “Doesn’t matter to me.” When they watched a movie Mac usually got bored halfway through it, anyway.

KJ sighed. “They’ve got to open a movie rental place around here soon.” She said.

Mac shrugged. “There’s one downtown. Never been to it.” Her family didn’t have a VHS player, and therefore no reason for Mac to go looking through VHS tapes.

They watched the movie. Mac thought it was okay, and KJ thought it was fine, too. It seemed more like something Erin or Tiff would like, and KJ thought she had vague memories of Erin mentioning it at some point.

Afterwards Mac meant to walk home. “You can spend the night here, if you want.” KJ said, “So you don’t have to walk in the dark.”  
Mac shrugged. “Walked in the dark before.”

“Or my mom could drive you.” And KJ wasn’t surprised when Mac didn’t want that. She wouldn’t have wanted to drive home with Mac’s mom, either. Of course, that was an extremely different situation.

KJ walked Mac back and then came home afterwards. She had homework. She hadn’t mentioned it to Mac, but her parents had wanted to send her to some private highschool since she was in kindergarden, and she would have to apply to it next year. Therefore, homework had become a priority, and something else would have to go.

Not field hockey practice, but something. So, her job. The newspapers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's that.
> 
> At least the chapter title actually makes a good deal of sense this time around. Of course, I used a lyric from that same song as a title like two chapters ago, but that's alright, I guess.
> 
> Also, this is the beginning of a subplot that's gonna be a pretty big deal over the next few chapters and really up to the end of the story. I'm not going to do any kind of big fight--I've never liked it when stories did that, and it bothers me more than usual with fanfics. But, none the less, lots of upcoming plot stuff. 
> 
> This is actually the halfway point in the story. Which is.....surprising. I'm also thinking, since this is halfway, that there should be some kind of intermission. So, the next chapter will be out two weeks from today. I'm going to try to keep working at the same speed so I can release two chapters on the....27th, I guess? But I've actually had some stuff going on, so I can't be sure about that. It might just be one.
> 
> Anyway, I really hope you guys like the chapter, and I'll be back in two weeks with a new one.


	8. Run If You Want To Live Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I'm glad to be back writing this thing. Only one chapter for you guys today, but they'll be another next week. I'm way, way happier with this fic than I've been in a long time. 
> 
> I think I used a bit too much internal monologue, but other than that I like this chapter. I'll work on putting in more dialogue/world-building in the next few chapters.
> 
> I hope you guys like it.

Mac was in her room, laying on her bed, eyes closed. She shouldn’t have been--it wasn’t time for bed for yet, just barely dark. But she didn’t want to be downstairs--that was the last thing she wanted--and she didn’t really want to be out of the house, either. There was nowhere she wanted to go and nothing she wanted to do.

That wasn’t completely true. There was one place she wanted to go, one place she would always want to go, not so much because of where it was but because of the person who lived there. But she didn’t go over there, and hadn’t in a couple of days, because--because, if she was being honest with herself, it was because she was scared. Scared of what? She wasn’t afraid of anything. Never had been, certainly wasn’t now. But still, she was scared, for some stupid reason.

And, anyway, it wasn’t like she could get there now--not unless she could climb down the window. She’d thought her father had reached the worst point he was going to reach. Which was stupid of her. But now, now he’d gotten to a point where she didn’t think he’d reach. Not now, not ever. Her face stung and her ears were ringing. She still felt like she hadn’t caught her breath; if it was because of adrenaline or whatever, or if it was because she’d had one too many cigarettes, she couldn’t know and didn’t want too.

Alice wasn’t home. Alice hadn’t been home in days--Mac knew her stepmother and her father had gotten into some kind of fight, which wasn’t unlike them. Whatever it was, she didn’t know and knew better than to ask, but it was clear something had happened--and Mac’s father wasn’t happy about it.

Mac couldn’t remember her blood mother. She wasn’t sure how old she’d been the last she saw her mom, but she couldn’t have been older than maybe three or four. Sometimes when she sat and thought really hard, she could almost remember; blurry pictures that sort of looked like the pictures her brother had shown her every once in a while.

She remembered her mom taking her and her brother to a Culver’s for dinner, or out grocery shopping, but if those were really memories, or just some kinda thing she’d made up in her mind, she didn’t know. What she did know was that her mother had left one day, a long time ago, when her brother was about ten or eleven.

The details weren’t really clear; Mac hadn’t asked her father, and her brother didn’t like to talk about it. “Jesus!! They got into a fight, Mackenzie! You know that! Quit asking, got it?” Her brother had yelled one day, about a year ago, louder and angrier than he’d ever gotten with her before. He almost sounded like her old man. Mac tried not to think that. After that he relaxed a bit.

“They fought a lot, when you were really little, you know?” he said, his voice was still hostile, irritated, but not angry. This sort of annoyed Mac--if he was angry, he should just freaking show it. And, anyway, why did people have to yell when they got mad? Mac didn’t like yelling. She did a lot it, and seemed to do more as time went on, but she’d never liked it. “One day, fight got really bad, dad was really angry. You know what he’s like, when he gets angry, but this was worse. Mom, the old lady got her stuff, left, never that was it. They got divorced at some point after that, I was about twelve or thirteen, or there’d be no Alice. I guess dad got custody, ‘cause we’re fucking here.” That was that. Mac had said nothing for a minute. It was all stuff she’d heard before, and than her brother had said, “Now, I don’t want you asking about that shit anymore, alright? It’s not your business.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” Mac had replied.

Now Mac was starting to see where her mother had been coming from, and where Alice was coming from. Although Mac suspected Alice wouldn’t actually stay gone. Mac thought she’d be back, and, frankly, Mac thought that was a pretty dumb thing to do.

She’d gotten away, right? She was an adult. She’d gotten away, Mac’s old man wasn’t going after her. Alice had done and was able to do what Mac had been dreaming of doing for years, what Mac would do, in just over five years when she turned eighteen.

Alice had left and Alice was gone but Alice would be back and the same dumb cycle would start again. But for now Mac had been home alone with her father, when he was angry and drinking and refusing to go to work. He’d told Mac it was her fault. “Alice told me she didn’t want any kids. She told you that, girl?” he asked, “I never wanted kids either--you know that. Your bitch of a mother....she insisted. Never would do it now, shouldn’t have done it then. Too late, I guess, though, isn’t it? I’m an idiot, doing that, got what I deserved, you couple of stupid kids.” He’d said that, and Mac had wondered if she was better off staying or going to her room.

That was as far as Mac would let herself think. It was stupid to think about stuff that had happened, stuff she couldn’t change. Now she tried to think about more practical stuff, stuff that she could change. She had bruises. She couldn’t let KJ or Erin or Tiffany see them, or KJ’s parents. She hadn’t been seeing much of KJ’s folks, anyway, because she hadn’t gone to their house since June, and now it was the very end of July.

But she still saw them when they picked up KJ to drive her to hockey practice--KJ’s schedule had gotten tighter--and Mac still saw KJ every day when they delivered papers. KJ would see, KJ would ask, and KJ wouldn’t believe what Mac said. That was as far as Mac could think about it. It was weird, how she felt; there were so many thoughts going through her head but she couldn’t focus on any of them, she had laid there and let them circle in her mind.

***  
KJ knew there was a problem almost as soon as she saw Mac the next day. It made her feel sick. Sick and angry. She’d asked, somehow, and Mac had told her a very condensed version of the story.  
“Goddamnit, Mac.” KJ said, without even thinking about it. After that, she found herself at a complete lost for words. She couldn’t ask what happened again, because she knew what happened, and she couldn’t say “are you okay” because Mac would say yes--or, rather, Mac would say Mac’s version of yes--even though the answer was, quite clearly, not yes.

“The hell?” Mac muttered, eyes locked on her boots and not looking at KJ.

KJ hesitated. “Can you....” she paused. “Are you going to stay with your brother?”

“If I am, nobody fucking told me.” Mac said. She kicked her bike hard, and it crashed sideways to the ground. She threw her bag of papers next to it. This was something KJ never thought that she’d see; Mac risk both her bike and her job in the same five seconds.

“Can’t you call him?” KJ asked. She didn’t like Mac’s brother and she never had, and unless she missed her guess his friends that he lived with would be worse, but now KJ realized the extent of what was happening, and that anywhere would be better than where Mac was now.

“C’mon, Kaje.” Mac said, “It wouldn’t change anything. Do you really think my brother wants his sister staying with him and his friends in his stupid house in Cleveland?”

“Than--you can come to my place.” KJ said. The way she said it, it wasn’t a question. It was something that was going to happen.

Mac shook her head. “Can’t do that.”

“No, Mac. You have too.” KJ said, gently. All KJ’s life, she’d been changing everything she did to try to avoid arguments, to try to please people. Every time she did it, she wondered why she did. She’d never had many friends. Not until she met Mac and Tiffany a few years ago. Other kids bullied her. For being Jewish, for being rich, for being around them when they were upset about some stupid shit.

She didn’t tell her parents, because she always felt like she was complaining. They’d given her everything. The nicest house in the neighborhood, the ability to take whatever classes she wanted to take, the chance to go to one of the best colleges in the country, a company she could work at if she couldn’t get a different job. Everything. To be complaining about something as meaningless as school would’ve been whining, and if she whined that would disappoint them.

Sometimes she complained to her grandmother, but she felt even worse doing that. So instead, KJ tried to make friends best she could. She stopped telling people she was Jewish. She tried to hide that her family had money. It changed nothing, but she kept doing it anyway.

Than she met Mac, and Mac was different. KJ had liked Mac instantly--Mac was cool and savvy and rough around the edges. Everything Mac had, she had earned. Mac was tough. Mac had every reason in the world not to like someone like KJ, justified or not. And so KJ had basically been waiting for the day when this occurred to Mac and Mac left, and KJ had told herself that she shouldn’t get upset when it happened, because of course it would, and also because, what did her grandmother always say, about this stuff not really mattering, even if it felt it did?  
But Mac never did leave. Even when KJ told Mac she was gay, which KJ was sure was going to be the last straw, Mac had stayed. KJ owed her the same. Owed her not to let her go back to a place that was dangerous.

“Your folks aren’t gonna let me move in, Kaje!” Mac threw her arms up. “They barely even know me.”

“They will, Mac.” KJ said. She grabbed Mac’s arm, and noticed that Mac flinched at the sudden movement. “If you tell them what happened, they will. They don’t even have to know, not at first,” KJ added, “If you don’t want them too.” The last part seemed the kind of thing that could go very south very quickly, but KJ decided they could deal with that later. What was important now was getting Mac out of there.

Mac was clearly trying to think of a way out. “I can’t really go back and get my clothes!” Mac said, “He’ll ask what’s up. He hasn’t gone to work in days.”  
“You can borrow some of mine until you think you can go back.” KJ said. She was taller than Mac, but not to the point where that should’ve been a problem, and, anyway, lots of Mac’s clothes had belonged to her brother before that.

“If he notices that I don’t come back and he calls the cops,” Mac said, “Your parents would get in a to of trouble. People’d think they kidnapped me or something.”

KJ sighed. This hadn’t occurred to her, somehow. “Do you think he’d call the police?” She asked, doubting it but figuring Mac would know better.

“I dunno.” Mac said, “I guess he might not--but you never know when it comes to my old man; he could be calling the police right now, for all I know.”

“You could just stay for a few days,” KJ suggested. “It’s not great, but I mean, it is something. We can just do it for now, and rethink everything after that.”

Mac shrugged, she tapped her fingers on her bike handlebar. KJ had never seen look this nervous, not even close. “I guess we could.” Mac said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter next week.
> 
> I've had this one (and the next one) planned for a long, long time but, damn, it was really hard to write. Might have been the hardest so far. Anyway, this chapter and the next one will work more or less as a two-parter. So, this chapter was meant to take place on July 31st. Next chapter will start on August 1st.
> 
> Next chapter will probably be pretty long, but I'm not completely sure. I'm really glad all the plots I thought of before are finally actually happening. Things are gonna be pretty interesting after this. I was having some writer's block with the past few chapters, but I think I've gotten over it. I like this chapter. I mean, none of this thing is remotely close to professional, but I like to think it's not bad for fanfiction. I'm obviously extremely biased, though. (I will add that Paper Girls fanfic tends to be good....I'm yet too read any I don't like). 
> 
> I'm gonna have to do a lot of actual research for writing the next number of chapters (should've done that a long time ago, come to think of it) but--I'll work on it. I don't how it'll turn out, though.
> 
> I'm also considering making a Mac x KJ playlist, now that I've got Spotify.


	9. Laughing In The Rain; Our Last Summer.....Memories That Remain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New chapter. I hope you guys like it.

In Mac’s own opinion, she had mixed feelings about KJ’s idea. She went along with it because, logicially, she knew there wasn’t a better option. Hell, she’d been waiting as long as she could remember for some way, any way, to get out. She’d thought she would have to wait years and years, and now the chance was right there.

But when she actually thought about it, actually went over it in her head, there seemed to be too many things that could go wrong. It seemed….reckless. Come on, isn’t that how you are? She had told herself that day. Shit like debating and wondering stuff is for dorks. You always it’s dumb to do that. You just do what obviously makes sense.

So she went with it, pushed her concerns away. Tried to make like she didn’t care. Maybe that worked, because she didn’t back out of it and she went with it and the longer that went by the more normal it seemed.

“It won’t really make that much of a difference, Mac.” KJ told her, the first day they tried it. Later KJ had realized she was just as much talking to herself. “It’s not like you’re home all the time anyway. It’ll just change where you spend the night. No one will know.”

 

“Why would I care what it does?” Mac muttered, hardly realizing she’d spoken.

KJ rolled her eyes and said nothing.

On the part of KJ’s parents, they didn’t seem to notice anything. At least they didn’t at first. All they seemed to realize was that Mac was at their house a lot, which to them wasn’t a problem. KJ didn’t know exactly how much they knew of what Mac’s life at home was like, and they certainly didn’t have any idea what it had gotten to be like recently, but they knew it wasn’t great. For them, if Mac was around more often, that was for the better.

Mac was in the habit of not being home a lot. For the past twelve years--thirteen years, once the second week in August rolled around--she’d been home only when she really had to be. So staying out enough that KJ’s parents wouldn’t find something strange was easy.

Schools in Ohio came back early, so they were back in school not long after Mac moved in, and that made everything easier, too. KJ’s parents worked during the day, and in the evenings KJ’s excuse was that Mac came for dinner. Mac would slip out afterwards, and back in once they’d gone to sleep.

Weekends were harder, but they usually managed to swing it.

Mac still had to go to her house early in the morning to get the newspapers to deliver. Every once in awhile, she’d stop there in the evening to see her parents--parents, because, as she had suspected, Alice had come back--and they didn’t seem to think of it as anything other than Mac’s normal staying out of the house during the day.  
The one problem was that she couldn’t see her brother. She did miss him. She hadn’t been seeing much of him anyway, but it became seeing him not at all once she moved into KJ’s house. But as time went by she realized she missed him less and less. She noticed this happening, to an extent. She didn’t like it.

KJ’s parents were nice. Mac still couldn’t imagine they liked her much; the kid in town who smoked cigarettes and fought with people, who got in trouble with the police, and who was now spending more and time with their daughter. But if they didn’t like her, they never showed it.

Mac liked being near KJ, in a weird way that she didn’t feel about other people. Whenever KJ touched her--grabbed her arm, or she tried to get attention--a chill would go down her spine and she’d want KJ to do it more.

Mac had never liked to be touched, not for as long as she’d been alive. When her father came near her here quickly or suddenly, whenever his hands or whatever he was holding came in contact with her skin, it always meant something was about to hurt, probably badly.

As Mac got older she noticed that, with other people, she’d draw back quickly or get tense when they got close to her. It was like that with KJ, too, in the beginning, and it still was a like that bit. Mac wasn’t a fucking shrink, but she imagined stuff like that didn’t go away quickly, and maybe never did at all. But she got more and more used to it, more and more comfortable.

For KJ’s part, she was happy Mac was safe. Very happy. She was convinced that she must have done the right thing, at least the right thing for Mac. Mac was safer now, she was out of that house, thank god. All true. But every moment, every day, KJ had a persistent feeling that this wouldn’t last forever. It just couldn’t .

One day or another someone was going to find out. If she was lucky, it would be her own parents. If she was really lucky they’d welcome Mac home to stay. Probably not, they’d probably send her home, but it was a possibility.

If it was Mac’s parents, well…..that would be bad. That would be extremely bad. If it was the police, that could be worse, because KJ’s parents would get in trouble.

And she was lying to them. How could she lie to them? They didn’t deserve it. She was doing it for the right reasons, of course she was, but this didn’t seem like the way to do it.

She, Mac, and Tiff--and also Erin--had always firmly belived and firmly believed that kids and adults couldn’t work together. Kids can’t trust adults. Once people hit a certain age they no longer no what they were doing.

That had started out as Mac’s statement, and KJ did think it was exaggerated, but there was truth to it, in some ways. But that hardly helped anything. The point was that KJ’s parents did seem to trust her and she was using that to her advantage. To Mac’s advantage, really, but Mac’s advantage was hers all the same.

Still. Issues aside for the two of them, things were working out. They kept it up all through the month of August. Longer than KJ expected.

***

It was an evening that KJ’s parents weren’t home, they were at some kind of business dinner. It was the last day before September. Mac had turned thirteen, she and KJ were both back in school as 8th graders, Alice was home with Mac’s father, everything was more or less normal.

They were using the night they were home alone to play Scrabble in the living room. KJ’s parents’ giant, very clean living room that Mac didn’t see much of. Mac was alright at Scrabble, KJ was better, which wasn’t surpringing.

They must have taught a lot of words at that fancy private school, Mac thought. She lost focus quickly, she didn’t like games that much, and took to pacing around the room. “Mac, are we going to actually play this, or are we--” KJ didn’t get to finish the thought before the banging on the door started.

Loud banging, that didn’t seem to stop. And ringing the doorbell again and again. Both girls stopped, stared at the door. Nobody knocked like that. Certainly not KJ’s parents, the only people with any reason to be there. If there was a person knocking like that, there was a problem.

“Shit.” Mac said, breaking their silence. KJ, as quietly as she could got to her feet and went towards the phone. Mac turned to her, looking surprisingly calm given the circumstances. “Is someone breaking….”

“Come on! I see you! Open this door up right now, or you’ll fucking regret it.” KJ saw the color leave Mac’s face. “Do you hear me, Mackenzie? Do you fucking hear me?”

KJ understood. “Mac, that’s not--” Mac said nothing, but KJ didn’t need her too. Mac’s brother, KJ thought, Of course it is.

“He’s gonna call your parents.” Mac said, quietly. “He might call the cops.”

“Mac.” KJ said. “What if you leave? Just go out the back, he won’t know you’re here, and then once he leaves you can….”

Mac was shaking her head. “Nah. That won’t, that’s not gonna work.” She said, “He’s got a car, he can find me with it. We’ve got to answer.”

KJ stared at her. The worst part to KJ was that she wasn’t surprised, and didn’t think Mac was either. Neither of them even seemed scared, and KJ thought they should’ve been. But, after everything they’d seen, how on earth could Mac’s older brother scare them? “But, Mac, you have no idea,” KJ hesitated. She knew how Mac felt about her brother. “You don’t know what he might do.”

 

“He’s my brother,” Mac said, shrugging, stoic. When Mac was upset about something minor, she was always extremely emotional about it. Too emotional, KJ had always thought. But in situations where it was something important, and Mac knew she was wrong, she showed no reaction at all. “He won’t do anything.”

KJ closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. She couldn’t let Mac go back with her brother. She couldn’t let her own parents get in trouble with the police. She couldn’t answer the door, but she couldn’t let him keep banging on it.  
Every possibility would lead to something else she couldn’t do.

Mac ran to the door, KJ opened her eyes and looked up. “Wait!” She said, but she realized there was no point. Mac unlocked the door and swung it open.

It might’ve been the best option, because if the police were called, which they may have already have been, for all KJ knew, what would in all likelihood happen is Mac would be sent home, her father would be there--and her father was worse--and KJ’s parents would be in more trouble than KJ could imagine.

But if that was the better way, KJ couldn’t acknowledge it to herself then. And Mac regretted it the instant she saw her brother’s face.

“Get in the car right now!” He yelled, half-pulling her out the door and slamming it shut. “And never, ever go near that kike bitch again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something is going on with my ears, and I feel too awful to write proper endnotes.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> See you next week.


	10. Come And Rescue Me Now, 'Cause I'm Fallin' Apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here you guys go. I'm really sorry about the wait; I'm on a trip and my ear's been bothering me, so it took me a long time to finish this. I'll try to get the next chapter up on Thursday, so this doesn't push back the whole story.

Mac sat in the car, just after midnight on what was now September 1st. She was listening to her brother yell, and trying to focus on what was outside her window. 

Big, white houses, some lights still turned on so she could see the people still in them. Green grass yards, with white fences around them. None of them knew what was going on in this car. They probably didn’t even notice them.

“What the hell do you think you were DOING, Mackenzie?” She hadn’t heard his voice get that loud before, not in thirteen years of knowing him. He sounded exactly like their father when he yelled like that. Not really, because their father was older and his voice was much deeper, but to Mac it made no difference. Anyone was yelling like that was her father. “How the fucking hell could you DARE leave that house?”

Mac said nothing. He wasn’t expecting to get an answer, so why should she bother?

 

“ANSWER ME MACKENZIE!”

She flinched. Thirteen years like this, of this, every inch of her wanted to respond. To keep everything from getting worse. But she knew it wasn’t going to do anything. It was gonna be bad no matter what she did.

Her brother laughed. “So this is what you’re doing, isn’t it, sis?” he asked. His breath was tinted with alcohol. Mac hardly noticed it. “Listen, I’m gonna lay this out for you and you can decide what you want to do. Got it?”

Mac ignored him. Kept looking outside. Someday she wouldn’t be sitting here, in this car, her brother screaming his lungs out. No matter what she said, it wouldn’t get her away from this right now, and no matter what, she would get away from it someday.

“I’m going to take you home now. Dad called me, told me to find you and take you home so that’s what I’m doing. You know how he’ll react to you leaving, sis. I don’t have to tell you that. But, I could do two different things. The first, I could tell him I found you….I don’t know. Living off of the streets somewhere, with all the crazies in Stony Stream, or I could tell him I found you living with some girl. One who you’ve been spending a ton of time with for a long time. Which would you prefer?” He looked at her, his eyes cold. “Or, to put it into terms you might understand, which would dad prefer? Come on, Mackenzie. You want to tell me what you were doing there.”

Mac said nothing to him again. Her brother could tell their dad whatever he wanted. Hopefully he wouldn’t, hopefully he would change his mind, although it struck Mac as unlikely. But she wasn’t going to tell him. Maybe she should have been thinking of KJ and KJ’s parents. How, if her father knew about them, he might press charges on them or whatever it was KJ was afraid would happen.

But that wasn’t what she was thinking. At least, not completely. Later it was, but right now what of what was going through her head was that she was thirteen years old and tired of just sitting around and waiting.

Her brother pulled the car over. Just stopped in the middle of the street. “You’ve got ten seconds.” he said, and Mac ignored him still.

She heard him counting, his voice seemed to sound angrier with each number. She kept her eyes locked on the floor of the car. Empty bottles and used cigarettes, and little plastic bags and needles for other things Mac couldn’t really understand, but had a vague idea of, probably a better idea than any of her friends. He wasn’t always like this. If they’d been i this car years ago, the there would’ve been books on the floor of this old car, and he’d be driving Mac to a 7-11 to get ice cream so they didn’t have to listen to their parents fighting.

Something had changed at some point. Mac didn’t know what it was, but it had changed. A few times, the days at school when some kid said something dumb but minor, and her vision would go red and next thing she knew she’d be in the principal’s office, she felt it happening to her, too. She didn’t think it would, not anymore. She took a deep breath and waited for him to finish.

“Fine.” he said, “Makes no difference to me. You’re gonna regret it though, Mackenzie.”

They got to the house and she stayed in the car until her brother half dragged her out. He told her father what happened, and Mac didn’t look into her old man’s eyes.

Her brother left. Her father yelled, he threw things and they hit the wall. Alice went and sat in her room and tried to pretend that nothing was happening. A few of the words that father said stuck out in her mind. Words like “pervert”, or words like “queer” and “dyke”. She ignored them. So what if I am? She almost said that, time after time, but she didn’t.

By the end of it her skin hurt, and a part of her regretted everything. The part of her that was in every person, like the part that had made Alice come back home. But that part was stupid. So Mac walked upstairs to her room. She could hear her father yelling about something, telling her she would have to stay home except for school from now on.

She wondered what he had been like when he was her age. Was he still like this, or had that come later? It didn’t matter, though. He was now what he was.

She walked upstairs to her room, sad and tired but not fully surprised. She’d figure out something, though. Or KJ would figure out something, because KJ usually was better at things. But they’d figure it out. Somehow.

She sat in the small room and waited for the sun to come up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you guys enjoyed the chapter.
> 
> It was a tough one to write and it took way too long, but I think it turned out alright. I was able to put in the dialogue/world-building, which is usually the stuff I have a hard time with.
> 
> I'll try to get the next chapter up on Thursday, but I'm not sure if I'll be able too.
> 
> See you somewhere between Thursday and Sunday.


	11. Take Me Through The Darkness, To The Break Of The Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry again for the wait. Got it up as soon as I could. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Mac knew that October was one of KJ’s favorite months. She liked it, too, although not as much. School was back, though, and for her that was better than being at home.

This October was different, though, and it was worse. In a strange, half-aware sort of way Mac realized that in less than a month it would be a year. A year since the Hell Morning, a year since she almost lost everything. The Hell morning had been awful at the time, but the more and more Mac thought about it the more sure she was that those had been the best days of her life.

She thought about that time more than usual lately. Riding her bike too and from school, her legs not aching anymore, like they did the first few times she took that ride. She half-wanted to go back to it. The good but not good enough technology of the future, the strange and slightly different 2016.

None of that had happened, maybe. In the timeline, or whatever the hell the old-timers called it, none of that had any effect on anything, but that didn’t matter to Mac. It had had an effect on her, she was sure of that.

She missed KJ and she missed Erin and Tiffany. She hadn’t been able to speak to them almost at all. The school Erin went too wasn’t far from Mac’s, so sometimes they ran into each other when Mac was waiting for school to start. Erin still delivered the newspaper, and so did KJ, but Erin told Mac that KJ had half-mentioned something about not wanting to do it anymore.

Mac’s father had said that, because of what happened, she wasn’t allowed to leave the house except for school, and, on the rare occasion they went, church. Because of this she had lost her route--she’d suspected this would happen, but it upset her all the same. It was a good gig and she’d valued it a lot, and it had made her a decent buck. She knew it had given her more than that, much more, but that other stuff was the stuff she tried not to think about it. She’d also had to drop out of Girls Scouts. She’d made most of her friends there, before KJ and Erin and Tiff.

Those girls had been alright; better than the ones at her school, maybe, but usually they were snobs, from families like KJ’s but not like KJ at all. Still, there were some of them she would miss, and who didn’t live in her neighborhood the way Tiffany and Erin and KJ did.

Mac had never paid much attention to what her father told her to do, and nothing that happened recently had changed that. She couldn’t get out as much as she used to anymore--she did have to sneak past her father, which wasn’t that hard but also wasn’t that easy--but she still managed to be out most days. She never went to the library now, it reminded her to much of her brother, who she hadn’t spoken to since that day in September. But she went to the arcade or to see movies when she could, which was alright but wasn’t great. Most of the movies were dumb, and sometimes Mac didn’t mind that. She liked the corny adventure movies with their stupid effects and creatures in space or wherever. But the ones about teenagers and love triangles seemed pointless to her.

Her grades were slipping again, which bothered her because now she was actually trying. She paid decent attention in class and she worked pretty hard. She didn’t want to be like her father, and she guessed that in school he hadn’t tried, either. She could do better than that, she knew she could, so she tried, but so many years of not trying at all had caught up to her, and she wasn’t sure she’d be able to catch up.

She tried to stop smoking, which she thought would be easy. She chewed gum instead. It wasn’t nearly so simple as she’d thought it would be, and most days she ended up smoking again.

She did manage to avoid fights now, though. She’d had trouble in the past, with the other kids, and those idiots were the same as they always were. They still said what they said and did what they did. But Mac kept her headphones on whenever she wasn’t in class, and realized that when she couldn’t hear them she didn’t mind them as much.

One day, when Mac ran into Erin, she asked if she had any idea where KJ’s school was. If it was far. Really, she meant, if it was in bike-riding distance. “It’s pretty far,” Erin said, slowly. Mac guessed Erin realized what she was thinking. Erin turned out to be pretty sharp; much better than Mac had expected that day almost a year ago when they first met. “You know KJ has to take a special bus, or have her parents drive her. It’s farther than any of ours.”

“You don’t know where, though?” Mac asked.

Erin shrugged. “Well, my parents considered sending me there, but then they decided they wanted me to go to school with, well, with ummm….” Erin stopped, not sure how to finish, but Mac knew what she meant. Erin went on. “A couple of my sister Missy’s friends go there. It’s down somewhere near the big new bookstore they put up a few months ago. Missy always talks about it when she goes to their houses, because most of them live near it, and they also live near the school.”

Mac had heard mentions of the bookstore from some of the kids at school, the show-offy kids who got all A’s and would go to fancy colleges. Mac had some kind of idea where it was, but not that much. “But how far is it, Erin?” she asked, emphasizing “far”.

“Like, in miles?” Erin asked.

“In ‘how long does it take to bike’. Jesus Christ….” Mac muttered. A second later, “I’m sorry. Just…” she knew what she wanted to say but she wasn’t sure how, so she stopped there rather than embarrass herself.”

“Probably about eight or ten, I guess, maybe a bit less.” Erin said, and Mac heard her sigh a little.

“Rad, new kid.” Mac said. Leonardo--she thought. That had been Erin’s codename is 2171. Mac figured to could get there by bike. She’d probably done longer than that before. It would take her….maybe an hour or so, give or take. The weather was perfect now; not cold enough for ice and snow, but not so hot that she’d get too thirsty. And it probably wouldn’t rain.

So one Monday Mac took a pretty risky move. She skipped school; just went right past and drove to KJ’s school instead. Mac’s parents would get a call, with any luck they wouldn’t answer, but Mac didn’t give a shit if they did. Things couldn’t really get much worse, Mac supposed.

Mac waited outside KJ’s school until she recognized the tall girl with the brown hair. “Kaje!” Mac yelled. KJ whirled around, recognizing the voice but thinking she must have misheard,

“Mac!” KJ said, hurrying over. She’d taken her bike down to Mac’s house a few times, but nothing had ever happened and they hadn’t seen each other. Then it occurred to her.“You skipped school.” KJ said. Mac’s parents wouldn’t like that.

Mac shrugged. “School sucks, anyway.”

KJ figured Mac didn’t want to talk about it, and went with it. Shit, I hope they don’t find out, KJ thought. “Goddamn it, Mac. I really thought that was it.” KJ’s parents had asked about Mac a few times, where she was. KJ had made up some kind of lie, which is what she seemed to usually be doing these days.

Mac shook her head. “I wasn’t just gonna ditch you, Kaje.”

The bell started ringing Shoot, KJ thought. “I gotta get to school, Mac.” KJ said, thinking that Mac had basically wasted her time. “But, I’ll---I’ll stop by tomorrow afternoon, alright? Your dad will be at work.”

“And my stepmom’s never home.” Mac said, “She usually gets back like 7, because that’s the latest she can be home without my old man having a fit. He gets back at about 5:30 or whatever, most nights. I’m out of school at 2:30.”

“Alright.” KJ said, “I’ll see you then.”

Mac watched KJ head into school, and for once she couldn’t keep herself from smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're really getting close to the end now, I have to say. It's been a run ride, writing this thing.
> 
> Ears are feeling a little better. And I'm getting back from my trip in a few days, so hopefully we'll be back on schedule soon. I'm really sorry I've been so bad at updating lately.
> 
> Also, I need to listen to less ABBA songs when deciding on chapters titles. It's becoming a habit.


	12. 525,600 Minutes....How Do You Measure, Measure A Year?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the chapter. I hope you guys like it.

The next month marked that it had been a year since the Hell Night. One day, KJ brought this up to Mac. They were sitting in KJ’s room. Mac’s parents had become slightly clumsy, in comparison, to their grounding. Mac’s father was working a late shift--he did that pretty often, Mac said to KJ. In Mac’s opinion, what her father was actually doing was going to the bar for a drink. When he worked those “late shifts”, he usually wasn’t back until the early morning.

Mac’s stepmother, Alice, meanwhile, had yet again left. Gone away for a few days. She did that a lot now, KJ realized, and Mac said that she bet one day Alice would never come back. Mac didn’t know where her brother was. He got a new girlfriend a little before Mac moved in with KJ back in August--which seemed like a lifetime ago, to both of them--and he was considering moving in with that girl.

“‘Cept she lives on the other side of the country,” Mac said to KJ, a few minutes after KJ brought up the Hell Night. “Idaho or something, I think.”

“Idaho is…..where, exactly?” KJ asked. She didn’t pay much attention to the states that weren’t near where she lived or where she might want to go.

“It’s down near, like…..I dunno. Washington and Oregon, and a few other states.” One of the few topics in school Mac had any sort of interest in whatsoever was, KJ had learned, geography. And she was actually impressively good at it. However, her geography knowledge seemed to be something of a secret, and she would only share it if really pressed. “Montana, Wyoming, Nevada, and Utah.” Mac said after a moment, with a small bit of pride detectable in her tone.

KJ nodded. “What in the world was she doing in Ohio?” She asked.

“College,” Mac explained, “Ken-something-or-other. My brother met her when he was on a trip with some of his friends.”

“Kenyon?” KJ suggested. It was one of the schools she remembered her parents mentioning, in a you-might-go-here sort of way.

“Yeah--maybe.” Another thing about Mac was her complete disdain at anything having to do with college. College was, in KJ’s mind, something Mac would probably want to go to, if her life was different.

“That’s a…..really good school.” KJ pointed out. Not the sort of the school where you would expect a student to be hanging out with people like Mac’s brother. “You said she started dating him?”

“I guess,” Mac swung her arms behind her head and leaned against KJ’s bed. KJ smiled at the gesture. “Anyway, she graduated in the spring, she’s kinda older than my brother, and she was staying down here for a few months. But then she decided to go back home to her folks, and she invited him to come.” Mac said the whole thing in a bored tone with a lazy expression. “Think he decided to go, but I’m not sure. He didn’t tell me.”

“I’m sorry, Mac.” KJ said, “You must miss him.”

“He’s a dick.” Mac replied, eyes squinted and locked on the ground. “I’m better off without him.”

 

“He is a dick,” KJ agreed, and he was, “But he’s still your brother. I mean--of course you miss him.”

“Yep.” Mac said, and looking up at KJ, she added, “He wasn’t always like that, you know. He could’ve been better--he’s really smart, smartest in the family by far, and he used to work super hard. Somewhere down the line something changed with him.”

KJ nodded, slowly. She didn’t doubt that Mac was right. She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, Mac beat her to it. “Do you ever think that might….” Mac sighed. “This is dumb as shit, but do you ever think that could happen to me?”

“Mac!” KJ said. She wasn’t so much surprised Mac worried about this and she was that Mac was willing to admit it. “Of course not, Mac. I mean, so many times--back during the Hell Night, you saved us, and you could’ve died doing it. I mean, easily.”

“Yeah, well…” Mac smiled slightly at this. “To be fair, I thought I was only a few years away from kicking the bucket myself at the time.”

“Still, a few years are a few years.” KJ wondered now, what would had happened if she herself had died on that crazy trip. Her parents would have been devastated. They would have searched for her for years, never stopped looking, and never known. Should she have not been so reckless? She was the one, during the Hell Night, to always suggested they make the risky move, do the risky thing, force their luck as far as it would go. Had she been selfish to do that? She thought she was just risking the life of herself and other people willing to take the risk. She hadn’t thought about the people back home.

“I can’t believe this fucking decade is gonna be over in a few months.” Mac said, suddenly. “I almost can’t wait.”

“Oh come on, Mac!” KJ protested. “It wasn’t that bad--the music’s way better than that 70s punk stuff you’re always listening too.”

“ABBA was the 70s, Kaje.” Mac said, gesturing the poster on the wall. Mac had never willingly listened to one of their songs and would be pleased to never hear one again. KJ felt differently.

KJ laughed. Than, growing serious, she said, “Hey, Mac. I should probably tell you--I quit my paper job.”

Mac looked offended for a second and than he reconsidered. “End of an era, I guess.” Mac said, “Why’d do you finally do it?” Mac had lost her own job weeks ago.

“My parents wanted me to stop, so I could devote more time to school. And, anyway, it was interfering with my field hockey practice.”

“The New Kid’s the only one left standing.” Mac said, “I didn’t see that coming.”

“My family’s going to Michigan on the 26th of December, and we’re going to be there until early January. Maybe you could come? They’ll be down with it. If you can avoid your parents.” KJ added.

Mac shrugged. “I guess I’ll go. My folks are probably beyond caring now, to be honest. Long as I come back at some point, they’ll be okay.” Mac assumed, anyway. Only one way to find out.

And then they continued talking about other things. Their childhood job, where the four of them first met, was as as easily forgotten as so many other things about their childhood. More would be forgotten as they got older, but somehow they knew, in their own minds, they’d always remember each other, and Tiffany and Erin, no matter how long went by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only two chapters left to go. I'm pretty excited.
> 
> I really like this one...hard to come up with a title for, though.
> 
>  
> 
> I will try to get the next up on Thursday.


	13. There Is No Place Like Home, When You Got No Place To Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, a chapter published on the right day. I hope you guys like it! I can't believe how close to the end we are.

By the time December rolled around, Mac’s parents seemed to have relaxed for the most part about what happened over the summer. Things were more tense now, even than they’d been before, and when Mac’s father did get angry--which also happened more often than it used to--he always brought it up, and it did make things worse sometimes. But it wasn’t as bad as she had thought it might be.

Her brother did move in with that girl in the other state. He called Mac’s family’s house one day, and her father wasn’t home. It was just her and Alice. Alice had answered, but refused to talk to him--Mac and Alice didn’t get along to well, but they could actually be pretty okay sometimes. This wasn’t true of Alice and Mac’s brother. Because of this, Mac had to be the one to talk to him.

She did notice that he seemed upset when he talked to her. He seemed to, maybe, actually feel guilty for everything. This didn’t make a difference to Mac anymore. He’d still left her. He’d still sent her back to her father with no idea of what he might do. He had still used words no one should ever say. But he was her brother, and to say they’d never had good times would’ve been a lie.

Mac hung up as soon as she got the chance, and she went into her room and didn’t come out for a long time. She’d made the right choice, though, and she was proud of herself for that.

You still have five years here, Mac. She thought sometimes. Five more years. Five years ago she was eight--that was a long time. Still, she’d make it out, she knew she would. And she had KJ now, which made everything better.

KJ and her family didn’t celebrate Christmas, and Mac’s family didn’t really too much, either. They went to church every year, but that was all. Than they would just go home and spend the rest of the day as if it were completely normal. Mac remembered from the year before that Tiffany’s family and Erin’s family usually made a pretty big deal out of it. Tiff didn’t seem to think that much of that part of it, but Erin did seem to find it to be pretty important.

Mac was planning on going away with KJ’s family when they went on their trip, but she did wonder if it were a good idea. It seemed like too much could go wrong, and in a way hardly seemed worth it. She could ask her parents, and she wouldn’t have worry that way, but she was pretty sure of what their answer would be.

Still, one day she brought it up to them, fear and impulsivity getting the better of her. That happened to her sometimes; she tried to stop it, though, and it was getting better. “What’s your friends name?” her father asked, his voice loud. Mac responded with KJ’s name, forcing herself to look into his eyes. They looked like hers and more than that they looked like her brothers’.

“You want to spend Christmas away with a boy, than, do you?” He asked, giving her a smile that sent chills down her spine. “Alright, then. Knock yourself out.” His voice seemed amused, almost laughing, which Mac knew was never good. Than his face turned angry and serious, and he said, “Listen, missy, if you do anythin’ while you’re down there--I’ll make it so you can’t tell light from dark or left from right, you got it?”

“Yeah.” Mac said. She was surprised he let her go. But when she thought about it, she knew he wanted her away from him as much as possible. Plus, she’d heard what he called her, all the time since she was about eight or nine and decided to cut her hair short. He probably wouldn’t have let her go if he knew KJ was a girl. Serves him right, Mac thought, he’d be in for a surprise one day.

“You’ll miss church, I suppose,” her father said, getting up, and then, “Fitting for someone like you, girl.” Mac never agreed with what her father and brother thought about church. The way Erin and Tiffany’s parents talked about it made more sense to her.

Mac went up to her room to pack for the trip. This just meant throwing old clothes in a backpack her brother had gotten for her when she was eleven and he wanted to take her camping. She wondered what she would have done if her father had said no--she would have still gone, probably. She broke a lot of his rules these days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was kinda a mini-chapter.
> 
> I like making them longer, but by this point I honestly feel like there's not much left to say, and I don't want it to get boring.
> 
> I'm sorry I put it up so late in the day. Recently I've been putting editing off until like the day I publish it, and I had the days all wrong this week and thought today was Wednesday, so I had to make up for a lot of editing time. Hey, at least I finally had it up on the right day, though.
> 
> The next chapter is the last one. I'm really sad to see it end. It was a lot of fun to write. Hopefully it was good to read, too.
> 
> Anyway, see you guys next week with another chapter and probably a lot more notes.


	14. Sometimes I See How The Brave New World Arrives, And I See How It Thrives, In The Ashes Of Our Lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter. I hope you guys enjoy it.

It was January 1st, 1990. Just barely, really; it was just after midnight. Mac was on vacation with KJ’s family, sitting outside the house they’d rented. Everyone else had gone inside. “Are you coming, Mac?” KJ had asked, when her parents had gone in.

“Don’t wait up, I’ll be in a minute.” Mac had said. Michigan was pretty alright. KJ had talked about wanting to live there as an adult, and Mac could see why she might want that. Mac didn’t know where she wanted to live--not in Stony Stream, that was for sure. It wasn’t a bad town, not really, but when she got the chance to leave she wanted to be as far away as she could.

She guessed she didn’t really have to think about that now, though. She was only thirteen, she wasn’t even in high school yet. For the most part she wanted to be an adult; she wouldn’t have to worry about her parents anymore, and she wouldn’t have to live with them, and she wouldn’t be trapped in that house. Of course she wanted all that. But there was still something about being a kid, and thinking about how she was getting close to adulthood, that made her almost wish she’d be this age forever.

Every once in awhile, she’d be somewhere, usually with KJ going to see a movie, and some adult would come over and ask them how old they were, because for some reason adults always seemed to want to get involved with whatever kids were doing, especially if the kids weren’t with any grown-ups. When they said they were thirteen--or twelve, a few months ago--adults would always say those were the worst ages to be.

Maybe they were. They felt like they were, and Mac would be happy to be older and couldn’t help but feel like she was also happier when she was younger. But still. There was something about the way things were now; going to movies with KJ and playing video games and going to school and riding her bike everywhere she could possibly get it to go, even when it felt like it was about to break into pieces, that made Mac almost sort of sad when she thought about those days being gone.

She’d be in high school next year. Mac remembered pretty clearly when her brother started going to high school; he was fourteen, she was about seven. He’d been sort of different after that. Not different in the way he’d eventually been different, the way he was now. Not the bad-different. But just….different. He listened to more music than he did before, and he had more schoolwork. He didn’t ride his bike as much and he didn’t seem to have much of an interest in playing outside. He’d gotten new friends, for the most part, and he would go out with them and stay out later than he ever had before.

Mac wondered if that would happen to her. It had already, a little--for sure she was different now than she had been when she was ten or even eleven, but she thought she would probably be more different next year, as well.

It would be the year 2000 in ten years. She knew that, for the world, things would be pretty much the same. But for her everything would be different. She’d be twenty-three years old. An adult. Tiffany would probably be married to that Chris guy, the one who dressed like a vampire. Erin would still be working for the paper, Mac guessed, doing who knows what. She wondered where she and KJ would be.

Mac kicked a stone on the pathway leading into the house, watched it roll away. She took one last look around and went inside to see KJ.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's the fic for you.
> 
> I really enjoyed writing it, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading it. In the future, though, if I write more fanfic, it'll probably be mostly one-shots.
> 
> All the chapter titles come from song lyrics--either directly or almost directly. Mostly ABBA songs in the later chapters, if I'm being honest, but hey, the ABBA lyrics are apparently perfect for this thing. I still stand by "Our Last Summer" being the perfect Mac/KJ song. "Another Day" from RENT also really works for them, especially the demo version.
> 
> There was a lot I wanted to put into this fic that I just didn't have time for, so I'll probably save that stuff for one-shots and things.
> 
> The real, actual comic is back in just under a month and I'm really looking forward to it. It's such a freaking good comic and all the kids are awesome.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading this thing and staying with it chapter after chapter. Again, it was so much fun to write.

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's all for now! I really hope you guys enjoy it.
> 
> This is my first fanfic on here, but I'm doing the best I can.
> 
> I get that this first chapter was more exposition than actual story, but that's just because it's the beginning. I promise it'll pick up soon!
> 
> I'm also going to try to come up with good names for all the chapters. We'll see how that goes. 
> 
> One last thing, I actually met a waitress named Mackenzie yesterday. But she was a completely different Mackenzie in every respect.


End file.
